Assessing pain in farm animals requires species-specific knowledge because different species express pain differently and stoic prey animals mask discomfort.
Pain assessment in farm animals requires overcoming the evolutionary adaptations that make prey animals excellent at concealing vulnerability. Species-specific validated pain scales represent a major advance in welfare science — providing stockpeople with practical tools to identify pain that would otherwise go unrecognized. The welfare and economic cases for pain assessment align: animals in pain grow more slowly, produce less, and are more susceptible to secondary health problems. Investing in stockperson training in pain recognition is both ethically correct and commercially rational.