PIGS & PROSPERITY ▶▶▶
Your input on castration S
urgical castration is a painful husbandry procedure performed on piglets within the first week of life to improve meat quality. In the United States alone, approximately 94 million piglets will be castrated each year. To date, the US maintains no state
or federal legislation requiring that pain relief be provided to piglets at castration and, in fact, there is no Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved pain-relieving drug specifically for pigs labelled or available in the US currently. Therefore, veterinarians and producers in the US face great challenges when implementing pain management protocols on farm. United States vets and producers are not alone, although other pork-produc- ing countries around the world have better access to pharmaceutical drugs to manage pain; many of these countries have yet to effectively implement pain management for all castration. Under the European Declaration on alternatives to surgical castration of pigs, swine producers were required by 2012 to castrate piglets using prolonged analgesia and/or anaesthesia and, by 2018, surgical castra- tion should have been phased out altogether. However, this has not been the case as demonstrated by a 2016 survey conducted which revealed that more than 80% of male pigs are still castrated, and only 5% of this castrated population received anaesthe- sia and analgesia. Given the lack of implementation of pain management for piglet cas- tration, our group at North Carolina State University (NCSU) is interest- ed in better understanding and identifying the barriers preventing proper pain management on farm. The goal of this research study is to gain a better understanding of the use of pain management drugs throughout the global swine industry. We are looking for individuals from across the globe within the swine industry who have experience with pig care on farm to participate in a 15-minute, online survey. Participants will be asked questions about the use of anaes- thetics and analgesics for pain management in pigs. If you would like to participate, please visit www.pigprogress. net and click the NCSU logo link on the homepage about this survey.
The survey can also be found at the following link:
https://ncsu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_cI56zBEBS7iMFHD
Monique Pairis-Garcia Before joining North Carolina State University in 2019, Dr Monique Pairis-Garcia received her Doctor of Veterinary Medi- cine and Doctor of Philosophy degree from Iowa State University with a focus in swine welfare and health. Her research interests include pain manage- ment in live- stock animals.
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▶PIG PROGRESS | Volume 36, No. 6, 2020
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