Adequate pain management is a fundamental welfare obligation in veterinary care, yet pain recognition and treatment remain inconsistent across species, procedures, and veterinary practices globally.
Veterinary pain management is the most direct welfare intervention available across all animal sectors. Every surgical procedure, every painful condition, every husbandry intervention represents an opportunity to reduce suffering through appropriate analgesia. The persistent gaps in pain management — farm animals treated with inadequate or no analgesia due to cost, prey species with unrecognised chronic pain, fish and crustaceans routinely killed without prior stunning — are not primarily knowledge failures but prioritisation failures. The science of pain management is well-developed; the barriers are economic, regulatory, and cultural. Improving pain management standards across veterinary practice and farm animal treatment is one of the highest-leverage welfare interventions across multiple animal sectors simultaneously.