Dr. Erin King-Podzaline’s Published Research a Mile Marker in Career Devoted to Animal Welfare

Oftentimes in food production, animals are not routinely afforded pain control for common husbandry procedures. Pain contributes to negative experiences and impacts an animals’ overall welfare. We have an important role as veterinarians to improve the lives of production animals under our care and contribute to a food supply that consumers can feel good about, knowing the animal was treated well and taken care of throughout their life.

–Dr. Erin King-Podzaline, assistant clinical professor at Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University

In her research and in daily practice as a clinician with Tufts Veterinary Field Service (TVFS), Dr. Erin King-Podzaline puts animal welfare at the forefront of veterinary medicine. She is the lead author of a research study evaluating the efficacy of a needleless local anesthetic to reduce pain for piglets during castration, published in the Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science this past December.

Assistant clinical professor in the Department of Ambulatory Medicine and Theriogenology at Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University, King-Podzaline created two selectives for veterinary students to participate in the study, titled “Effects of a Multimodal Pain Control Protocol Using 2% Lidocaine Intradermal and Meloxicam Intramuscular on Mitigating Behavioral Castration Pain in Piglets Using a Needleless System.”

What’s unique about Tufts [Cummings School] as a veterinary school is the focus on human-animal relationships. Animal welfare fits into Tufts’[Cummings School’s] mission so perfectly. I’m capitalizing on the strengths of Tufts [Cummings School] and building on that commitment to human-animal relationships.

–Dr. Erin King-Podzaline, assistant clinical professor at Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University

Currently in the process of becoming board-certified with the American College of Animal Welfare, King-Podzaline will be the first Cummings School faculty member to attain this specialized certification. She serves on the Welfare Committees for both the American Association of Bovine Practitioners (AABP) and the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA), developing animal welfare guidelines for the veterinary profession and the general public. She also holds a master’s degree in animal welfare and behavior from the University of Pennsylvania.

King-Podzaline found her niche within veterinary medicine, working at a student-run dairy farm while earning her BS in animal science at the University of Vermont. “I like being outside and spending time with farmers. I really appreciate what they do. Dedicating my career to improving the lives of farm animals is very meaningful to me, especially since they provide a lot for us as humans.”

On the TVFS team for nine years, King-Podzaline joined the faculty at Cummings School soon after earning her D.V.M. at Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine. She appreciates the mix of clinical work, teaching, and research at Cummings School. In clinical practice, she focuses on dairy production medicine, traveling to farms to treat sick animals, addressing herd health and reproduction issues, and assisting with farm protocols. With animal welfare now more heavily embedded into Cummings School’s new curriculum as a thread through the preclinical years, King-Podzaline steps up to teach many of these courses, in addition to a course in the Master of Animals and Public Policy (MAPP) program at Cummings School.

The impetus behind King-Podzaline’s recently published study was finding a medication and protocol to reduce pain for piglets during castration, readily adoptable by the swine industry. According to the paper, “Surgical castration is a critical animal welfare issue because it is a painful procedure that results in both acute and chronic pain sensitivity.”

The study notes that approximately 94 million piglets are castrated annually in the swine industry, often without local anesthetic or systemic pain control.

“Pigs are a prey species, so they often don’t show signs of weakness,” explains King-Podzaline. “It is now well understood that they do feel pain in the same way that we do and other species do. They may not show it in the same way, but they do experience it.”

Published studies are split on whether certain analgesics alleviate castration pain for piglets. King-Podzaline’s study evaluated the effectiveness of needleless lidocaine and intramuscular meloxicam. Male piglets received one of four needleless treatments: the aforementioned, lidocaine/saline intramuscular, saline/meloxicam intramuscular, or saline/saline intramuscular. The study included 96 male and 78 female, healthy, purebred Yorkshire piglets between three and 12 days old. Females were sham castrated.

This is only the second study to look at needleless application of lidocaine to mitigate pain for piglets during castration. The paper cites previous research demonstrating needleless administration to be less painful and stressful in humans. In terms of animal welfare, food safety, and worker safety, the needleless method eliminates the risks of a needle breaking off in the piglet or injuring a worker.

Also novel to the study was analyzing piglets’ behavior to determine levels of pain, instead of the more common practice of drawing blood to assess biomarkers such as cortisol (indicating stress). King-Podzaline notes that piglets become stressed when handled and that stress is not specific to pain. She opted to instead utilize the Unesp-Botucatu Composite Acute Pain Scale, specific to castrated piglets.

King-Podzaline invited first- and second-year Cummings School students to participate in the study during two semester-long selectives. In the first, students spent one afternoon a week at the Cummings School Swine Unit to administer treatments and surgery to piglets undergoing castration. During the second selective, students analyzed video recordings of the piglets’ behavior to assess pain response. King-Podzaline and the student team recorded the piglets’ behavior over an hour during four sessions: 24 hours before surgery, and 15 minutes, three hours, and 24 hours post-castration. All students received prior training in a clinical skills laboratory and were closely supervised by King-Podzaline. She also collaborated with researchers at North Carolina State University College of Veterinary Medicine.

The team ultimately found that needleless lidocaine and intramuscular meloxicam were not effective for pain control in piglets during and following castration. Now that this avenue has been explored, future research can focus on alternative options. The paper recommends testing other pharmaceuticals and analgesic protocols that can be administered without a needle. A barrier to this research is that no pharmaceuticals are labeled by the FDA for pain control in swine. Meloxicam was used extra-label in this study, which is permitted under the Animal Medicinal Drug Use Clarification Act (AMDUCA).

“Piglets do feel pain at castration, and we need to mitigate that,” says King-Podzaline. “We have not found the most effective and easily adoptable strategies for use at the commercial level with swine. A lot of work needs to be done to put that into practice and find effective strategies.”

King-Podzaline plans to continue to study pain control associated with husbandry procedures across species.

“Animal welfare is my biggest interest. From a personal place, we owe these animals that contribute to our food supply the best life possible. It’s rewarding to dedicate my career to doing that.”