Farm animals routinely undergo painful procedures including castration, dehorning, and branding, often without adequate pain relief. Evidence strongly supports anaesthesia and analgesia as welfare-positive and economically beneficial interventions.
The pain management gap in livestock is one of the most significant and tractable welfare problems in commercial farming. The procedures causing most pain — castration, dehorning, and tail docking — are common, predictable, and occur at defined life stages where intervention is entirely feasible. The barrier is not medical complexity but habit, regulatory frameworks that have not mandated pain relief, and misconceptions about cost and practicality. Research consistently shows that analgesic protocols improve production outcomes — animals in less pain eat and grow better. Veterinary leadership, farmer training, and regulatory reform all play roles in closing this gap, and some countries including Switzerland and New Zealand have successfully mandated pain relief for routine procedures.