Moving beyond absence-of-suffering to measuring positive experiences in farm animals requires identifying reliable behavioral indicators that producers can assess practically.
Traditional farm animal welfare assessment focused primarily on identifying and reducing negative experiences - disease, injury, fear, and pain. This negative-focused approach, while important, misses a key dimension of animal welfare: the presence of positive experiences. Animals in systems that merely avoid suffering but provide no opportunities for positive experiences may still have poor overall welfare. Behavioral indicators of positive states - play, exploration, affiliative interactions - are increasingly recognized as measurable welfare outcomes. Producers who monitor for positive as well as negative indicators are better positioned to provide genuinely good lives for the animals in their care.