Adequate pain management for animals is a fundamental welfare requirement, yet significant gaps exist between evidence-based practice and what many animals receive in veterinary and farm settings.
Veterinary pain management is the most direct welfare intervention available for animals in medical and agricultural contexts. Pain that goes untreated is suffering that could be prevented — the welfare case for adequate analgesic use is the most fundamental possible. Yet significant gaps remain between evidence-based pain management guidelines and common practice, in both companion animal and farm animal settings. The barriers are multiple: inadequate pain recognition training, economic pressure to minimize drug costs in farm settings, regulatory restrictions on some analgesic uses in food animals, and cultural norms in some agricultural communities that minimize animal pain experience. Closing these gaps requires: better pain recognition training for veterinarians and farm staff, regulatory approval pathways for analgesics in food animals, economic incentives through welfare certification that require analgesic use, and cultural change in farming communities through demonstration of production benefits from treating pain.