Moving beyond the absence of suffering to actively assessing and promoting positive welfare states represents the next frontier in farm animal welfare science.
The shift from welfare as absence of suffering to welfare as positive flourishing represents a fundamental advance in how we think about farm animal lives. A pig that merely does not suffer is living a better life than one that does suffer — but a pig that plays, explores, forages, and forms social bonds is living a genuinely good life. Positive welfare indicators give us measurable targets for the quality of life we should be providing, not just a floor of minimum acceptability. This reframing is changing how welfare standards are written and audited.