Velvet antler removal from farmed deer for the traditional medicine market is practised commercially in New Zealand and parts of Asia, and raises significant animal welfare and ethical questions.
Velvet antler removal raises welfare concerns even when performed under local anaesthesia. The procedure involves restraint of an animal with strong flight responses, injection of local anaesthetic into highly innervated growing tissue, sawing or cutting through vascular antler, and the post-procedural experience of blood loss and altered sensory feedback from the antler stump. Evidence that local anaesthesia is sufficient given the nerve density of growing antler is not conclusive. The welfare cost is real; whether it is justified by the medicinal value of the product is contested given the weak evidence base for velvet antler's therapeutic claims. The practice is banned in some countries and restricted in others.