Modern pig welfare science focuses on positive states including play, exploration and social bonding, not just the absence of disease and injury. Measuring positive welfare advances the field.
The shift toward positive welfare assessment in pig science represents a conceptual advance from mere harm reduction to genuine wellbeing promotion. A pig that is healthy and not in pain may still be in a poor welfare state if chronically bored, frustrated or unable to form social bonds. Positive welfare science asks whether animals are experiencing pleasant states — curiosity, playfulness, contentment — and develops validated measures of these states. Farms that prioritise enrichment, stable social groups and species-appropriate environments produce pigs with measurably better welfare states by both positive and negative criteria. This reframing motivates farm improvements that go beyond regulatory compliance.