Positive welfare science for pigs focuses on identifying and promoting indicators of good emotional states — play, exploration, and social bonding — rather than simply measuring and reducing negative experiences.
The positive welfare paradigm for pigs moves beyond preventing the worst suffering to actively promoting good lives. Research using cognitive bias testing — where pigs trained to expect positive or negative outcomes from ambiguous cues reveal their underlying emotional state — consistently shows that enriched environments produce more optimistic affective states. Play is particularly revealing: locomotor play (running, jumping) and social play (play-fighting) occur in pigs that are well-fed, healthy, and not chronically stressed. These behaviours are measurable by trained observers and increasingly included in welfare assessment protocols. Providing rooting substrate is both a positive welfare intervention and a measurable outcome: pigs with substrate spend more time rooting, show lower cortisol, and are less aggressive. Stable social groups, appropriate stocking density, and opportunities for novelty exploration all promote positive welfare. The best commercial producers now incorporate positive indicator scoring into routine welfare assessments alongside health and injury measures.