Pig Castration: Strategies, Animal Welfare and Pork Quality
A special issue of Animals (ISSN 2076-2615). This special issue belongs to the section "Pigs".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 1 May 2026 | Viewed by 753
Special Issue Editors
Interests: food quality and food safety; sanitary inspection; meat quality
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: carcass composition; meat quality; image and spectroscopic methods for carcass evaluation
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: breeding management; genetic improvement; native farm breeds
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
In 2020, around 81 million piglets were surgically castrated in the EU, about 31.5% of all pigs slaughtered that year. This is usually done without anesthesia up to 7 days old, raising ethical concerns about pain and animal welfare. The main reason is to prevent boar taint, an unpleasant odor affecting consumer preference, and to reduce aggressive behavior in non-castrated males.
Several options have been studied, but three main alternatives are being considered: 1. Surgical castration with anesthesia, which reduces suffering but adds cost and complexity; 2. Raising non-castrated males, avoiding castration but requiring boar taint detection at slaughterhouses; 3. Immunocastration, a vaccine against boar taint, has concerns about effectiveness and consumer acceptance.
The welfare of production animals is a strong concern for consumers and a major issue in pig industrial production systems. Even though enrichment materials can be given to pigs even in enclosed spaces to encourage natural behaviors and improve animal welfare without altering the housing structure, alternative methods offering pigs environments where they can express their natural behaviors are becoming more popular.
Further research is necessary to balance animal welfare and meat quality, avoiding compromises to animal welfare and the economic losses associated with meat that has undesirable organoleptic characteristics for consumers.
Dr. Alexandra Esteves
Dr. Severiano R. Silva
Prof. Dr. Rita Payan-Carreira
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- pig castration
- castration strategies
- pork quality
- swine management
- livestock welfare
- swine industry
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