Pig farmers should not castrate piglets without some type of painkiller, says the Justice Ministry’s Animal Welfare Council.

Lene Espersen, the justice minister, had ordered the council in March to look into the practice and make a recommendation after she had received criticism from animal rights groups for not putting a stop to the castrations.

‘We firmly believe that it is necessary to use painkillers with any surgical castration,’ Birthe Lindstrøm Nielsen, the council’s chairwoman, told public broadcaster DR. ‘The pain relief treatment should preferably be given prior to the castration, but should in any case be given at some point to ease the animal’s suffering.’

Farmers who sell pigs to meat packers often castrate piglets to combat the odor and inferior flavour that can often result when pigs are not castrated.