Measuring positive emotional states in pigs, not just the absence of suffering, represents an important advance in comprehensive pig welfare assessment.
Traditional farm animal welfare assessment focused primarily on the absence of suffering: no disease, no injury, no distress. The positive welfare framework asks an additional question: are animals experiencing genuine positive states? Play, exploration, and affiliative social behaviour indicate positive affect and are reduced by chronic stress. Measuring both negative and positive indicators gives a more complete welfare picture and points toward management that creates genuinely good lives, not merely tolerable ones.