Meat Pigs

Most male pigs around the world are surgically castrated, often without any pain relief. The main reason for castration is to prevent boar taint, the undesirable odour or taste in pork which arises from chemicals produced by sexually mature males. Castration also reduces aggression and sexual behaviours in male pigs which cause injury and affect welfare later in life.

Surgical castration is highly painful, and the pain lasts for days after the procedure. While pain relief can be provided to some extent with the use of anaesthesia and analgesia, it is not completely effective and carries additional costs for the producer. Two main alternatives exist to surgical castration in pigs: rearing entire males and vaccination to delay puberty.

An illustration showing different ways to avoid tail docking pigs

A summary of our technical information sheet on the topic in a simpler, easy to read format.

Tail biting in pigs is a problem of modern pig production and can occur at all stages in the production cycle. It leads to tail damage of varying severity (see Hunter et al., 1999) and can include swelling and infection, which travels up the spinal cord causing abscesses in the lungs, and pyaemia (a type of septicaemia causing widespread abscesses in the organs (see Schröder-Pedersen and Simonsen, 2001 for full details). Tail biting is therefore a serious welfare issue. In order to reduce the risk of tail biting in modern pig production systems, producers dock the tails of pigs, either with side cutting pliers or gas-heated cautery clippers. Tail docking does not eliminate tail biting however, and is a procedure that causes acute and transient pain, with potential long term chronic discomfort.

A summary of our technical information sheet on the topic in a simpler, easy to read format.

Piglets are born with eight sharp needle teeth which are either cut just above the gum-line (with sharp side cutter pliers) or the tip is ground (with a rotating grindstone), shortly after birth. Teeth clipping and grinding are collectively known as tooth resection, practiced to prevent damage to sows’ udders and facial fighting lesions of piglets during lactation. Routine tooth resection is not permitted under EU legislation (Commission Directive 2001/93/EC) and teeth-clipping (as opposed to teeth grinding) is not permitted in some countries, such as Germany, Denmark, Norway and Switzerland.