Positive welfare goes beyond the absence of suffering to the presence of positive experiences. Research on pig positive welfare indicators helps define what thriving looks like for farmed pigs.
The science of positive welfare moves beyond preventing suffering to actively promoting positive experiences and emotional states in animals. For pigs, positive welfare research has identified behavioral indicators that signal thriving rather than merely surviving — play behavior, voluntary social interaction, exploratory rooting, and the optimistic judgment biases seen in animals with good quality of life. These indicators provide targets for farm management that go beyond the absence of injury and disease. Farms aiming for positive pig welfare provide complexity, rooting materials, social stability, and opportunities for the full range of natural pig behavior. This standard is achievable and increasingly demanded by progressive welfare certification schemes.