Alternatives to piglet castration

Abstract

In most countries, male piglets are castrated to prevent boar taint in meat due essentially to androstenone and skatole. Surgical castration is legally performed without analgesia until 7 days of age, but could be banned in the future since it is very painful. One solution could be to relieve the pain, using anaesthesia and pre-emptive analgesia. Taking into account the numerous constraints for the use of drugs on pig farms, very few solutions exist. One of them is to combine local anaesthesia with lidocaine and prolonged analgesia with an anti-inflammatory drug. Alternatively, surgical castration could be replaced by immunocastration or local destruction of testicular tissue by salts. The most documented solution is to immunise male pigs against GnRH but there are currently no licensed products in the EU. Moreover, the consumer acceptability of the method and its consequences on the welfare of pigs are poorly known. Raising entire males could also be considered, provided that it is possible to decrease the incidence of boar taint and to sort out tainted carcasses. Skatole and mainly androstenone levels could be lowered by genetic selection. Further decrease in skatole could be achieved via adapted management and nutrition. Regarding carcass sorting, new methods are under evaluation. In conclusion, banning of surgical castration would cause serious problems to the pig industry that it is not yet prepared to handle.