Positive welfare science for pigs focuses not only on preventing suffering but on identifying and promoting the behavioral states that indicate genuine wellbeing — play, exploration, and social affiliation.
The positive welfare science of pigs represents a conceptual shift: welfare is not the absence of suffering but the presence of genuine flourishing. A pig that plays, explores, grooms companions, and engages with its environment is experiencing positive welfare that goes beyond mere absence of pain. Enriched environments that support these behaviors produce pigs with measurably different psychological profiles — more optimistic, more engaged, less fearful. This transformation in welfare science from harm-prevention to flourishing-promotion changes what good farming looks like and provides new, observable metrics for welfare assessment.