Animal welfare science has transformed from a peripheral concern to a recognised discipline; understanding its history reveals how concepts of animal minds and suffering have been reconceptualised over decades.
The emergence of animal welfare science as a legitimate academic discipline has transformed the policy landscape for animal protection. Early welfare science focused primarily on physical health and production performance; subsequent decades incorporated behavioural needs, emotional states, and ultimately subjective experience as welfare-relevant domains. The field now encompasses neuroscience, ethology, economics, and philosophy in an interdisciplinary approach that would have been unrecognisable to the founders of early welfare legislation.