Good pig welfare requires more than absence of suffering — pigs need opportunities for positive experiences. Assessing positive welfare indicators helps identify systems that enable pigs to have good lives.
Positive pig welfare requires active provision of opportunities for play, exploration, rooting, and positive social interaction. These experiences are not luxuries but biological needs for animals with the cognitive complexity of pigs. Farm systems that enable positive welfare create measurably different animals — more curious, calmer, more playful, and more resilient. The inclusion of positive welfare indicators in assessment frameworks represents an important evolution beyond simply measuring suffering absence.