The science of pig positive emotions has advanced significantly through cognitive bias testing, vocalization analysis, and neuroimaging, providing tools to assess whether farming systems genuinely promote pig flourishing.
Pig positive emotion science provides the empirical foundation for welfare standards that require more than absence of suffering. The cognitive bias approach — testing whether pigs interpret ambiguous stimuli optimistically or pessimistically as an indicator of underlying mood — operationalizes positive welfare in a way that can be measured objectively. Research consistently shows that pigs in enriched environments with social access, rooting substrate, and environmental complexity show more optimistic cognitive bias than pigs in barren systems. This evidence should inform welfare certification standards that include positive affective state requirements alongside conventional negative welfare indicators.