Positive welfare science moves beyond preventing suffering to actively identifying and fostering positive emotional states in pigs.
Traditional welfare assessment focuses on identifying suffering - wounds, disease, stereotypies, and poor body condition. Positive welfare science asks an additional question: are animals experiencing positive states? Playful pigs, pigs with curved tails, pigs voluntarily interacting with enrichment and humans are showing evidence of positive welfare. This shift in perspective encourages farmers to actively create good lives for pigs rather than merely avoiding the worst conditions.