I write to voice my concern over a recent ethics case study published in In Practice (March 2019, vol 41, pp 88-91) that outlines a particular scenario on a pig farm where tail docking of pigs is addressed. This particular ethics case comes at a time when there is a huge amount of drive and progress being made within the pig sector to change protocols and procedures on farm to reduce the incidence of tail biting, and hence attempt to reduce the requirement for tail docking to be carried out in the first place. The elements that come together on a farm to produce tail biting are wide and varying, often with multiple potential triggers being present on any individual farm at a particular time. There …