Routine procedures in pig farming — including castration, tail docking, and teeth clipping — cause significant pain, yet analgesia is not universally required. Improving pain management is a priority welfare issue.
The normalization of painful procedures without pain relief in pig farming reflects an era when animal pain was poorly understood or deliberately ignored for economic reasons. The science now clearly shows that these procedures cause significant acute pain, and some (particularly castration) may cause lasting sensitization. The economic barrier to using available analgesia is low — meloxicam costs pennies per dose — making the absence of pain management in many systems primarily a cultural and regulatory failure. Welfare-certified pork increasingly mandates analgesia for any performed procedure.