What Is so Positive about Positive Animal Welfare?-A Critical Review of the Literature.

Alistair B Lawrence,Peter Sandøe,Belinda Vigors

doi:10.3390/ani9100783

Abstract

Simple SummaryPositive animal welfare (PAW) is thought to have come about as a response to there being too much of a focus on avoiding negatives in animal welfare science. However, despite its development over the last 10 years, it is not clear what it adds to the study of animal welfare. To clarify this, we conduct a review of the literature on PAW. We aim to identify the characteristic features of PAW and to show how PAW connects to the wider literature on animal welfare. We find that the PAW literature is characterised by four features: (1) positive emotions which highlights the capacity of animals to experience positive emotions; (2) positive affective engagement which seeks to create a link between positive emotions and behaviours animals are motivated to engage in; (3) quality of life which acts to give PAW a role in defining an appropriate balance of positives over negatives and; (4) happiness which brings a full life perspective to PAW. While the first two are already well situated in animal welfare studies the two last points open research agendas about aggregation of different aspects of PAW and how earlier experiences affect animals’ ability to have well-rounded lives.It is claimed that positive animal welfare (PAW) developed over the last decade in reaction to animal welfare focusing too much on avoiding negatives. However, it remains unclear what PAW adds to the animal welfare literature and to what extent its ideas are new. Through a critical review of the PAW literature, we aim to separate different aspects of PAW and situate it in relation to the traditional animal welfare literature. We find that the core PAW literature is small (n = 10 papers) but links to wider areas of current research interest. The PAW literature is defined by four features: (1) positive emotions which is arguably the most widely acknowledged; (2) positive affective engagement which serves to functionally link positive emotions to goal-directed behavior; (3) quality of life which serves to situate PAW within the context of finding the right balance of positives over negatives; (4) happiness which brings a full life perspective to PAW. While the two first points are already part of welfare research going back decades, the two latter points could be linked to more recent research agendas concerning aggregation and how specific events may affect the ability of animals to make the best of their lives.

Highlights

Positive animal welfare (PAW) is often described as a recent idea or concept
For this we have critically reviewed the literature identifying both core PAW writings that clearly contribute to development of the PAW concept, and work in the wider literature representing relevant areas of research that are clearly linked to PAW
Webb et al ([72] (p)) introduce the concept of affective happiness which can be thought of as how an animal feels most of the time and this we propose overlaps with this conception of happiness and the application of the quality of life (QoL) concept to PAW

Summary

Introduction

Positive animal welfare (PAW) is often described as a recent idea or concept. The first formal reference to PAW appears to be in Boissy et al [1] which was followed a year later by the first conceptualAnimals 2019, 9, 783; doi:10.3390/ani9100783 www.mdpi.com/journal/animalsAnimals 2019, 9, 783 development of the concept [2]. In this paper we will analyse the existing PAW literature to define the key features of PAW coming out of this, and their relationship with the wider animal-welfare literature. For this we have critically reviewed the literature identifying both core PAW writings that clearly contribute to development of the PAW concept, and work in the wider literature representing relevant areas of research that are clearly linked to PAW. We have reviewed and analysed the core PAW literature to distill four features that currently define how the PAW concept is understood. We aim to make clearer what research areas have contributed to the development of PAW and what PAW uniquely contributes both scientifically and more widely to the debate over animal welfare

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Discussion

Conclusion