Modern farm animal welfare assessment increasingly incorporates positive welfare indicators, measuring good experiences rather than just the absence of suffering.
Welfare science has historically focused on preventing suffering, but a complete welfare assessment requires measuring positive states too. An animal free from the Five Freedoms negatives may still lack the Five Domains positives of normal behaviour and positive mental state. Incorporating positive welfare indicators into farm assurance auditing creates incentives for farmers to actively improve animal experiences rather than merely preventing the worst outcomes. The Five Domains model and Qualitative Behaviour Assessment are among the validated tools now being applied at farm scale to measure both negative and positive welfare dimensions.