Tail docking, a common practice in modern pig farming, involves the partial amputation of piglets’ tails, typically within the first few days of life.
No animal has evolved to be kept in captivity, and even those domesticated animals who humans have genetically modified through artificial selection to be farmed more easily, are still maladapted to live on a factory farm. As a result, the animals kept in high-density factory farms, like pigs, will experience a very abnormal life which will often result in abnormal behaviour. One such behaviour often found in pig farms is tail biting, which may begin as a minor compulsion of biting another pig’s tail springing from stress and lack of stimulation, but may end up developing into cannibalism.
The Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB) is the levy board which represents farmers in the UK food supply chain. According to them, “Tail biting is an undesirable behaviour that can occur in any group of pigs. It can spread quickly in pig pens once it has started and can lead to painful tail injuries, infection, spinal abscesses and lameness…Tail biting is a complex and multifactorial problem. There are a number of known and identifiable risk factors associated with outbreaks and in order to understand why the problem is occurring, a systematic way of monitoring and recording tail-biting incidents and possible causes should be developed. To help owners/keepers find the solutions and management strategies that work best on a particular farm unit, the following six factors should be investigated, where necessary with the advice of a vet: thermal comfort, air quality and light, health and fitness, competition, diet, enrichment material, pen structure, and cleanliness.”
Tail docking, a type of mutilation that involves vets or farm staff partially cutting the tails in baby pigs, is a procedure commonly performed in the US, most European countries, and many other parts of the world, ostensibly to reduce the risk of tail biting among captive pigs. In some countries, it is performed in almost all pig factory farms routinely, but in others, such as the UK, routine tail docking is not permitted (but it is still performed after a vet has certified the farm has a tail-biting problem and has written a derogation to the ban, or if there is enough evidence of injuries to other pigs’ tails after improvements to the pigs’ environment and other management options have proven to be ineffective).
The primary justification for tail docking is the prevention of tail biting, as this can lead to injuries, infections, and the killing of affected pigs before being sent to slaughterhouses (which is considered a problem in the industry as the flesh of the killed animals cannot be sold if killed this way). According to the American Veterinary Medical Association, “Tail docking is performed to reduce tail biting and cannibalism among pigs. Tail docking should be performed early and sufficiently prior to weaning such that no open wounds remain on the end of the tail at the time of weaning.”
It is performed on piglets when they are only 1-3 days old, and farmers typically use one of two methods to cut (dock) parts of the tails: clippers (disinfected side-cutters used to cut approximately 2 cm from the base of the tail) and cauterization (a heated iron is used to cut and seal the tail simultaneously). The entire group of pigs living in the same space need to go through this procedure very quickly because if only a few remain to have an intact tail (or a tail which is still quite long after the cutting), they would become the targets of the disturbed pigs desperately looking for a tail to bite.
The Reality of Tail Docking in Pigs
Despite its widespread use, tail docking is a controversial practice that raises significant animal welfare concerns as not only does it cause suffering, but it is not considered effective enough at tackling the problem it tries to solve.
As no anaesthetics are used during the procedure, tail docking is always painful and not only causes acute pain but can also cause chronic pain to piglets. Dr Alice Brough, an experienced UK vet who specialised in pigs and has performed this procedure many times before becoming vegan and quitting the industry, reported to Vegan FTA that, during the procedure, the piglets scream, and when they are put back down, they do a continuous grunting, suggesting a shock/pain reaction. This may last a few minutes while they find the comfort they need (lying in contact with their mother or each other under a heat lamp, shivering while they lie there).
Tail docking in pigs can have several long-term health impacts. It can lead to the development of neuromas in the tail stump, which are abnormal nerve tissue growths that can cause increased pain sensitivity in the tail area. Some studies indicate tail docking may be linked to higher disease incidence (in one study in Finland that included 10,852 pigs from 479 farms, docked pigs showed a higher prevalence of arthritis and abscesses at slaughter compared to undocked pigs).
While tail docking may reduce the incidence of tail biting, it does not eliminate the problem. In Ireland, where 99% of pigs are docked, a study found that almost 60% of the pigs inspected had detectable tail lesions from tail biting (1% of pigs were found to have severe tail lesions).
Another problem of tail docking is that it can mask underlying problems in the farm. Tail docking allows farmers to ignore or downplay the root causes of tail biting (keeping many animals in captivity in very bad conditions), which is often worse in substandard housing and management practices.
Banning Tail Docking in Pigs
Tail docking of pigs is essentially banned in the EU as a routine procedure (Council Directive 2008/120/EC, Annex 1). However, the regulation allows tail docking when no other methods have successfully reduced the tail biting incidence satisfactorily. In consequence, tail docking remains very common throughout the EU, with a total ban being enforced only in Finland (2003), Sweden (1988), and Lithuania (2008). Outside the EU, Switzerland and Norway also banned it (the UK only has a ban on “routine” tail docking, but industry insiders have reported that such a ban can easily be circumvented by regularly producing evidence of trail biting).
The countries that banned tail docking in pigs focus on addressing the underlying causes of tail biting by improving housing (providing more space, partially slatted floors, and better ventilation), improving environmental enrichment (offering continuous access to rooting materials like straw, sawdust, or peat), optimising feeding (ensuring high-quality feed and sufficient feeding spaces), and improving health management (maintaining high biosecurity and animal health standards), but at the end of the day, a farm continues to be a “prison” where pigs will be deprived of the space to be free to move, the stimuli of a normal life, and the choices their brains evolved to make, so it is unlikely that the tail biting problem can completely be eliminated or prevented. The only way to ensure that tail biting never occurs is by not exploiting any pigs.
Tail docking in pig farming is a painful and controversial practice that fails to address the root causes of tail biting. From a vegan standpoint, tail docking exemplifies the broader ethical issues surrounding pig farming, as it inflicts unnecessary pain on sentient beings, and allows for the perpetuation of intensive farming practices that prioritise efficiency over animal welfare. Treating pigs as commodities rather than as individuals capable of suffering is an inherent part of the animal agriculture industry, so the only ethical alternative is to abolish it and replace it with a plant, fungus, alga, and bacteria-based food system.
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