“…Available evidence suggests that castration at any age is painful (Gunn et al, 2004) and this practice is now questioned in an increasing number of countries due to animal welfare concerns (Fredriksen et al, 2011). Raising entire male pigs has some economic advantages as boars possess the advantage of superior growth over castrates, a lower feeding demand, generally leaner carcasses, and compared to castrates less feed is needed in order to achieve the same final weight, whereby also fewer nutrients are emitted to the environment (Morlein et al, 2015;Wauters et al, 2017). However, slaughtering entire male pigs implies the risk of having carcasses with the so-called boar taint (Aaslyng, Broge, Brockhoff, & Christensen, 2015) posing a risk to the entire pork supply chain therefore being a significant barrier to the banning of the undesirable practice of piglet castration (Mathur et al, 2012).…”