Animal welfare science is increasingly focused on positive welfare — not just preventing suffering but actively promoting good experiences. For pigs, whose cognitive and emotional complexity is well established, this represents a significant shift in how we think about production standards.
The science of pig positive welfare represents a significant advance beyond the traditional focus on preventing disease and injury. Evidence that pigs have pessimistic or optimistic cognitive biases depending on their environmental conditions means that welfare assessment must include measures of subjective experience — not just physical health indicators. Enriched environments that support play, exploration, and social bonding produce pigs with measurably better emotional states, lower cortisol, better immune function, and improved production parameters. This creates a strong argument that positive welfare and productivity are complementary rather than opposed — a framing that has traction with producers operating on tight margins. Positive human-animal relationships — where stockpersons approach pigs calmly, handle them gently, and interact with them consistently — produce significant fear reductions that translate into welfare improvements across all farm activities. The challenge is translating this science into routine farm practice through training, assessment, and incentive structures that reward positive welfare outcomes rather than only penalising welfare failures.