Moving beyond welfare as the absence of suffering, positive welfare science identifies and measures specific positive experiences animals can have, providing a richer welfare assessment framework.
Positive welfare science expands the ethical obligation from preventing harm to actively enabling positive experiences. This reframing has significant practical implications: an animal kept alive, healthy, and free from acute suffering but denied opportunities for play, exploration, and social bonding has poor welfare by positive welfare standards. Assessment systems that measure positive indicators — play frequency, affiliative behavior, voluntary approach to handlers, relaxed posture — provide a more complete welfare picture than those focused only on injury, disease, and stereotypy absence. Positive welfare frameworks raise the bar for what we owe animals.