Tail docking removes part of a piglet's tail to prevent tail biting, but like beak trimming in poultry, addresses a symptom of inadequate housing while causing acute pain and sometimes chronic discomfort.
Tail docking, like beak trimming in poultry, is a procedure that treats the symptom of injurious behavior while leaving the underlying welfare problem untreated. The pain of the procedure is real and measurable. More importantly, eliminating tail docking requires improving the housing conditions that cause tail biting, and this improvement is itself a significant welfare gain for the entire herd. The EU has theoretically required producers to exhaust environmental solutions before docking, but enforcement has been weak, making the ban largely ineffective in practice.