What science reveals about positive emotional states in pigs — play, anticipation, and contentment — and how this evidence should transform how we design and evaluate pig farming systems.
The scientific literature on pig positive emotions has profound implications for how we evaluate and design farming systems. Current welfare assessment frameworks focus heavily on the absence of negative states — disease, injury, and pain — but increasingly, animal welfare science recognizes that genuine welfare requires the presence of positive experiences, not merely the absence of suffering. Pigs in enriched environments with social stability, rooting materials, and space for play express behavioral signatures of positive emotional states. Farming systems that cannot support these states are failing pigs at a deeper level than visible suffering metrics capture.