The welfare science community is increasingly focused on positive welfare states — not just eliminating suffering but actively promoting good experiences and psychological wellbeing in farm animals.
The transition from welfare as absence of suffering to welfare as presence of positive experience represents a paradigm shift with profound implications for farming practice. A cow without disease or injury but confined to a barren, unstimulating environment has acceptable welfare by negative criteria but poor welfare under positive criteria. Positive welfare requires that animals be able to experience pleasure, satisfaction, and engagement — goals that demand environments rich enough to allow species-appropriate expression of all motivational systems. This is a higher bar, and one that most intensive systems currently fail.