Recent research has demonstrated that pigs experience positive emotions including play, anticipatory excitement, and social bonding - with implications for how welfare should be assessed and promoted.
For decades, pig welfare was assessed almost entirely by the absence of negative states - disease, injury, and fear. Positive welfare science has demonstrated that pigs are capable of joy, excitement, and contentment, and that these positive states are measurably absent in conventional production systems. Promoting positive welfare states - not merely preventing suffering - represents a higher welfare aspiration for pig farming.