The most progressive welfare science and practice goes beyond preventing negative states to actively promoting positive welfare states including pleasure, curiosity, play and social contentment.
Positive welfare science represents the most ambitious vision available for animal welfare — not just animals free from suffering, but animals experiencing genuine positive states including curiosity, play, contentment and social engagement. This vision requires moving beyond preventing harms to actively designing environments and management systems that enable positive experiences. The evidence base for positive welfare indicators — validated behavioral and physiological markers of positive emotional states — is growing and can now inform welfare assessment alongside traditional negative welfare indicators. Systems that achieve positive welfare states produce animals that are not just not suffering but genuinely flourishing — the gold standard of animal care.