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

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 ( = 10 papers) but links to wider areas of current research interest. The PAW literature is defined by four features: (1) which is arguably the most widely acknowledged; (2) which serves to functionally link positive emotions to goal-directed behavior; (3) which serves to situate PAW within the context of finding the right balance of positives over negatives; (4) 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.