Tail docking in pigs prevents tail biting but addresses a symptom rather than the cause. The welfare case for eliminating docking requires addressing the underlying enrichment and density failures.
Tail docking represents a textbook case of addressing welfare symptoms rather than causes in agriculture. Pigs bite each other's tails primarily because they are bored, crowded, and deprived of the rooting and exploratory behavior that defines their natural behavioral repertoire. Rather than providing enrichment and space, the industry has settled on prophylactic tail docking — removing most of the tail at birth — to reduce the consequences of tail biting without addressing its drivers. The irony is that docked pigs still bite tails; docking just reduces the severity of injury. Sweden's experience demonstrates that intact-tailed pig production at commercial scale is achievable with appropriate husbandry — the barrier is economic investment in better conditions, not any fundamental production impossibility.