With positive animal welfare law, acceptable animal welfare requires that people in charge of animals provide animals in their care with opportunities to have positive experiences while continuing to minimise negative ones.

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"Opportunity" means providing access to positive states so that the animals can exercise a choice. For example, not all animals may seek the shelter of a tree or a shade cover but the point is to provide them with that option.

Positive experiences include more than toys. Opportunities for comfort, interest and pleasure include providing shelter for farmed animals, a clean environment for animals at home, opportunities to socialise, bedding and environment choices, and foods that are more than a mono form survival diet that conveniently translates to food conversion rates on an Excel spreadsheet.

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What else is important to an animal? Identifying the answer to that question is a process of course, but it’s not an impossible one. Ask most animal owners and they’ll access common sense, experience and observation to quickly tell you what their animal’s preferences are.

 

But science provides “proof” of what most people inherently know by routinely constructing experiments studying animal choices and outcomes – it’s providing the opportunity for the animal to make a CHOICE that is a key ingredient of positive animal welfare.

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The Sentient Animal Law Foundation doesn't see positive animal welfare as the final end-of-the-journey solution.

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• But just as the Five Freedoms science extended the duty of care from animal "protection" concepts to animal "welfare", the science of the Five Domains has validated that animals experience positive states thereby validating an extension of the 'duty of care' to include positive animal welfare.

• As the human-animal relationship evolves, this step will be retrospectively viewed as one in the continuing journey.