Tail biting in pigs is a damaging behaviour driven by barren, overcrowded environments — the industry response of tail docking addresses symptoms rather than causes, creating a cycle of pain and inadequate welfare.
Tail docking is a management response to a welfare problem caused by management. The behaviour it prevents — tail biting — is itself a symptom of environments so inadequate that pigs redirect their frustrated foraging drives onto each other. Docking imposes acute pain to prevent subsequent pain, without addressing the conditions that make biting likely. The existence of documented countries where pigs are raised undocked at commercial scale proves that the alternative is feasible. The barriers are primarily economic: enrichment, space, and management investment cost money that current commodity pork prices do not incentivise. Regulatory reform with meaningful enforcement, rather than derogation-heavy implementation, is required to break this cycle.