The Five Freedoms framework has guided animal welfare assessment for decades, but modern welfare science increasingly focuses on positive welfare states and what enables animals to thrive.
The move from harm prevention to positive welfare promotion represents a paradigm shift in animal welfare science and practice. An animal that is not suffering is not automatically thriving. A dairy cow free of lameness and disease but unable to graze, socialise appropriately, or engage in species-typical behaviour has absent positive welfare even with absent negative welfare. High-welfare farming, companion animal care, and wildlife management increasingly need to demonstrate positive experiences, not just absence of negative ones. This raises the bar for what good welfare actually means.