Positive welfare science goes beyond preventing suffering to actively promoting good welfare states including positive emotions and natural behaviour expression.
The shift from welfare as absence-of-suffering to welfare as presence-of-positive-states represents a significant advance in animal welfare science. It raises the bar for what counts as 'good welfare' - preventing suffering is necessary but not sufficient. Animals should be able to experience positive states including pleasure, play, and successful expression of natural behaviours. This challenges many commercial practices that prevent suffering while also preventing positive welfare.