Modern animal welfare science increasingly focuses on positive welfare, not just absence of suffering. Understanding how positive states are measured advances the field beyond minimizing harm.
The shift from focusing exclusively on negative welfare (preventing suffering) to also measuring positive welfare states (promoting positive experience) represents a maturation of animal welfare science. This shift has practical implications: farms or enclosures that prevent obvious suffering but provide no opportunity for positive experience may still fail welfare standards. The challenge is developing validated, practical tools for measuring positive states that can be implemented at scale in commercial farming contexts.