Positive welfare indicators focus on signs of good welfare in animals themselves, enabling more objective and meaningful assessment than input-based measures alone.
Traditional animal welfare assessment focused primarily on negative indicators: disease rates, injury prevalence, and signs of suffering. While these remain important, a welfare assessment that only measures bad outcomes misses the crucial question of whether animals experience good lives. Positive welfare indicators include play behaviour, social affiliation, positive vocalisation, and approach behaviour toward familiar caregivers. The shift toward outcome-based, animal-centred assessment provides richer data about actual welfare states, enables comparison across farms and systems, and creates accountability for delivering positive experiences rather than merely avoiding obvious harms. Integrating positive indicators into official welfare assessment schemes is an ongoing project in welfare science.