Equine welfare assessment has evolved from the Five Freedoms framework toward more nuanced multi-domain approaches that incorporate positive welfare and subjective experience evaluation.
The evolution of horse welfare assessment frameworks reflects broader advances in animal welfare science. The Five Freedoms remain valuable as a communication tool and checklist, but their limitation is that meeting each freedom does not guarantee good welfare in a positive sense. The Five Domains model is more analytically rigorous in recognising that welfare is not simply the absence of suffering but includes the quality of subjective experience. For horses, this means asking not only whether a horse is free from pain and disease but whether it experiences positive emotional states, social bonding, and behavioural opportunities it finds rewarding. Applied equine welfare assessment is advancing through validated tools that can be used reliably by practitioners across different settings and populations, enabling welfare tracking and comparison over time.