Dehorning of cattle is one of the most common painful procedures in agriculture, performed on tens of millions of animals annually — but polled genetics and better analgesia offer welfare improvements.
Dehorning represents a choice — to continue accepting painful procedures as normal management, or to invest in genetic solutions that eliminate the need for the procedure altogether. The availability of effective analgesics makes performing dehorning without pain relief increasingly indefensible from a welfare perspective. Yet adoption of pain relief for dehorning remains inconsistent globally. The longer-term solution is breeding polled animals, which requires investment in polled genetics programs but eliminates a major source of farm animal suffering at the population level. Both paths — better analgesia now and polled genetics long-term — are worth supporting.