Tail-Biting in Pigs: A Scoping Review

SIMPLE SUMMARY: Tail-biting in commercial pig-rearing facilities is a welfare concern. Serious outbreaks may occur sporadically, particularly in the grower-finisher stage of production. A scoping review was undertaken to determine if there is general agreement on the common risk factors and appropriate intervention strategies of tail-biting. Online databases were explored for relevant articles and information was extracted from the articles based on predetermined questions. Important risk factors varied between studies, as did successful interventions. The provision of rooting material to alleviate a pig’s innate exploratory behavior was determined to be a common prevention/intervention strategy. Deciphering between risk factors and interventions in the literature was not always possible. Overall, the cause of tail-biting was determined to be multifactorial. ABSTRACT: Tail-biting is globally recognized as a welfare concern for commercial swine production. Substantial research has been undertaken to identify risk factors and intervention methods to decrease and understand this vice. Tail-biting appears to be multifactorial and has proven difficult to predict and control. The primary objective of the scoping review was to identify and chart all available literature on the risk factors and interventions associated with tail-biting in pigs. A secondary objective was to identify gaps in the literature and identify the relevance for a systematic review. An online literature search of four databases, encompassing English, peer-reviewed and grey literature published from 1 January 1970 to 31 May 2019, was conducted. Relevance screening and charting of included articles were performed by two independent reviewers. A total of 465 citations were returned from the search strategy. Full-text screening was conducted on 118 articles, with 18 being excluded in the final stage. Interventions, possible risk factors, as well as successful and unsuccessful outcomes were important components of the scoping review. The risk factors and interventions pertaining to tail-biting were inconsistent, demonstrating the difficulty of inducing tail-biting in an experimental environment and the need for standardizing terms related to the behavior.