Surgical castration of newborn pigs is used to prevent aggression as the male age during the grow-out period and to eliminate boar taint, the pungent odor caused by androstenone and skatole…

Surgical castration of newborn pigs is used to prevent aggression as the male age during the grow-out period and to eliminate boar taint, the pungent odor caused by androstenone and skatole accumulation in FAT tissues. The process of cutting the scrotum and pulling out the testes without anesthesia causes pain and stress in pigs and has a negative impact on employee morale, contributing to an already high personnel turnover on US farms. Replacing surgical castration in pigs has been a difficult problem for decades because the technical goals are to eliminate the production of androgens and to control for unwanted behaviors without removing the testis and inhibiting animal growth. Furthermore, the replacement must be cost-effective and easy to implement, otherwise IT will not be adopted on the farms. A single injection of ineuter, our solution for these difficult problems, has the potential for inhibiting maturation of the gonads if given to the newborn piglet. From the customer's point of view, they can gain emotional satisfaction that they are not consuming pork produced in an inhumane way and the injected chemicals will be eliminated by the time the animals are slaughtered.