Pain management in pigs is one of the most significant welfare gaps in commercial livestock farming — painful procedures are routinely performed without analgesia, and recognition of pig pain by producers and vets remains inadequate.
The systematic failure to provide pain relief for routine painful procedures in pig farming represents one of the clearest gaps between our knowledge of animal pain and our practices. We know that piglets experience surgical castration as painful — the physiological and behavioural evidence is unambiguous. We have effective, affordable analgesics that reduce this pain substantially. Yet millions of piglets continue to undergo castration, tail docking, and teeth clipping without any pain relief because economic incentives and regulatory frameworks do not require it. The moral case for changing this is straightforward and the economic cost is manageable — what is lacking is the regulatory will and consumer pressure to make change happen at speed.