Pigs routinely undergo painful surgical procedures including castration and hernia repair without anesthesia or adequate analgesia, representing preventable suffering affecting millions of animals annually.
Castration without pain relief is one of the most clearly preventable sources of acute suffering in pig production. The procedure causes immediate distress behaviors, elevated stress hormones, and altered activity patterns that persist for days. The argument that pain relief is too costly or time-consuming has weakened substantially as affordable local anesthesia protocols and immunocastration alternatives have been validated at commercial scale. The continued routine performance of unrelieved castration reflects normalization of animal pain rather than technical necessity. Hernia repair under field conditions without analgesia similarly represents a preventable welfare failure.