Pig pain management has advanced significantly through development of validated assessment tools and evidence-based analgesic protocols, yet implementation across commercial systems remains incomplete.
The advances in pig pain management represent a clear case where the science has outpaced practice. Validated grimace scale assessment, approved analgesic drugs, and positive economic analyses remove the major objections to pain management provision. What remains are implementation barriers including training, time, regulatory requirements for prescription drugs, and attitudinal resistance from some producers who do not recognise pig pain as a priority. Veterinary guidance and farm assurance schemes are the primary levers for improving uptake. The European Commission's strategy on animal welfare includes pig pain management as a priority, and market requirements from major food companies are increasingly including analgesia for painful procedures as a supply chain standard. Progress is real but unevenly distributed across geographies and production scales.