The use of appropriate analgesics and anaesthetics for painful livestock procedures is improving but remains inconsistent, leaving millions of farm animals experiencing preventable pain.
The gap between legal requirements and actual pain relief use in livestock farming reflects the combined barriers of cost, time, veterinary availability and the cultural normalization of pain in agricultural settings. Many painful procedures are performed routinely without pain relief that is legally required or professionally recommended. The solutions are available: local anaesthetics are cheap and effective for acute procedural pain; NSAIDs provide multi-day post-operative pain relief; veterinary prescription systems can build pain relief into farm visits. Changing practice requires addressing the cultural dimension alongside the regulatory one — farmers who understand that animals experience pain and can identify it are more likely to use available treatments.