Document type : Article published in la Dépêche vétérinaire
Author : P-L H
Preview: In light of the ban on the castration of piglets without anaesthetic from 1 January 2022, the French Minister of Agriculture Julien Denormandie announced at the pork interprofessional general assembly on 6 July that his goal was to make at least three local anaesthesia protocols available to farmers before this deadline.
There are indeed three anaesthetic products (along with their respective administration protocols) that are of interest to the sector and these were presented at the general assembly. They are procaine, which is currently available but deemed insufficiently effective by some veterinarians; tri-solfen, which is not authorised for sale in Europe; and lidocaine, which is authorised for sale but not for use on pigs.
Protocols that are already available
"Two of the three protocols presented this morning can already be brought into use", announced Julien Denormandie. "Work is ongoing with the interprofessional group and the National Agency for Veterinary Medicines on the third protocol, which involves an unauthorised molecule, so that this can be implemented by January 2022.
In any case, the General Assembly has not arrived at a new professional decision on the matter of castration, for example, who will bear the additional costs of detecting carcasses with boar taint - which the Brittany Professional Retraining Centre proposes should be carried out by Uniporc - has not yet been agreed.
