The Five Domains Model provides a comprehensive framework for assessing livestock welfare across nutrition, environment, health, behaviour, and mental state domains.
The Five Domains Model represents a conceptual advance in welfare assessment by integrating functional welfare factors with their experiential outcomes. Unlike the Five Freedoms, which focus primarily on eliminating negative states, the Five Domains explicitly aims to promote positive mental states. A complete welfare assessment asks not just whether an animal is free from suffering but whether it is experiencing positive states including comfort, curiosity, engagement, and pleasure. Implementation in practice requires trained assessors, validated indicators for each domain, and systematic scoring approaches that capture the full welfare profile.