Measuring positive welfare in pigs goes beyond checking for disease and injury to assessing play, curiosity, social bonding, and other indicators of good lives.
The shift from welfare as absence of suffering to welfare as presence of positive experiences is one of the most significant developments in animal welfare science. For pigs, this means that a welfare assessment must include not just records of disease, injury, and abnormal behaviour, but also observations of play, exploration, social interaction, and other indicators of positive affective states. This higher bar for welfare challenges conventional farming systems that may meet minimum standards for physical health while failing to provide the conditions for pigs to experience genuinely good lives. High-welfare pig farming means providing outdoor access, enrichment, stable social groups, and management practices that generate positive experiences as well as preventing negative ones. Welfare indicators validated for positive states give farmers, auditors, and retailers practical tools to assess this higher standard.