Tail docking of piglets is routinely practiced to prevent tail-biting in intensive systems. Adequate enrichment can largely eliminate the need for this painful procedure.
Tail docking treats a symptom while ignoring the cause. Tail-biting occurs because pigs in barren intensive systems redirect their strong drive to root and explore toward their pen-mates. Providing rooting materials satisfies this behavioral need and eliminates most tail-biting without surgical intervention. The fact that routine tail docking continues throughout the EU despite being legally prohibited illustrates how enforcement of animal welfare law fails in practice. The welfare solution is well-established: provide adequate enrichment and environmental complexity, and tail-biting becomes rare. The barrier is cost and system inertia rather than technical difficulty.