QUICK LINKS
1.1 What is Animal Welfare?
1.2 How is Animal Welfare Assessed?
The Five Freedoms | The Five Domains
1.3 Animals Feelings and Needs?

1.1 What is Animal Welfare?

The World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) defines animal welfare as animals having the opportunity to be healthy, comfortable, well nourished, safe, able to express innate behaviour and the absence of suffering. Animal welfare is not just the absence of suffering or avoidance of negative experiences but is also the promotion of positive experiences. It is both the physical and emotional state of an animal.

Understanding animal welfare from an animal’s perspective is key as THEY are the ones who decide if an experience is positive or negative to them. It is therefore important to understand that what animals need to experience good welfare will often vary from animal to animal, as well as depend on the context in which the animal lives (e.g. its environment, human attitudes and practices, and available resources). In addition, understanding and improving animal welfare can confer important benefits to both animals and people.

Animal welfare is assessed by measuring and evaluating how well an animal’s needs are being met in accordance with the animal’s natural behaviour. This will incorporate assessment of the environment in which the animal lives, whether the animal’s social needs are being met (e.g. being around, or away from other animals of the same kind), how well-nourished the animal is with appropriate nutrition, and the animal’s level of health, both physical and psychological. An animal’s welfare can also vary by factors such as seasonality, work type, animal age, gender, and/or owners’ practices, which is why making welfare assessment a regular, ongoing practice can be beneficial.

1.2 How is Animal Welfare Assessed?

There are many different models, or frameworks, for assessing or defining animal welfare, the most notable of which include the Five Freedoms and the Five Domains which are discussed in sections which follow.

Despite the existence of different assessment frameworks, it is helpful to consider concept of the “Balance of Life Experiences” when seeking to understand and promote animal welfare. In this concept, the ‘ideal’ of a ‘good life’ is something that all owners should strive to achieve by finding small incremental ways to improve an animal’s life experiences and bring their welfare to an acceptable, realistic standard that contributes to them having a life worth living. Brooke’s animal welfare policy provides an example of the practical application of the concept of promoting ‘a good life’ for animals.

The Five Freedoms

The earliest, and most known, animal welfare guidance is the Five Freedoms. The five freedoms are widely known and used internationally across different species to outline what animals need and want [3]. The five freedoms have given focus to the importance of “understanding, identifying and minimising negative welfare states” [4].

The five freedoms include:

However, as the five freedoms focus is on relieving or avoiding suffering, there is limited focus on the promotion of positive states. Evidence to prove an animal’s ability to experience emotions, such as pain, fear, and stress along with joy, affection, and happiness, has led to welfare assessment being developed to allow for this and to encourage the promotion of positive experiences rather than just alleviating negative.

The Five Domains

The five domains framework for welfare assessment evolved from earlier frameworks to focus on the promotion of positive states of welfare, while continuing to minimise negative ones [2]. The first three domains of nutrition, environment and health focus on the physical condition or state, while the fourth domain of behaviour focuses on the surroundings that can promote or limit the expression of natural behaviour (e.g. the environment, humans, or other animals). These four domains feed into the fifth, the ‘Mental States’ domain, which is the emotions and moods an animal feels, which in turn determines their welfare status. Mental state can be positive or negative, passive, or active.

For most animals, handling is essential for their management and healthcare. However, for working animals, handling is prevalent each day of their lives. These animals work and live alongside people, meaning that handling is one of the most frequent events they experience. If handling is inhumane then it is relentless and enduring. However, if handling is compassionate, it can be an enjoyable experience for them. Handling can be a way to increase the number of positive experiences that an animal has across its lifetime. [5]

Animals remember whether an interaction with a human has been positive or negative and this will affect the way they behave, with negative human-animal interactions more likely to result in fear behaviour. Handling should correspond with LIMA principles (Least Invasive Minimally Aversive) [6]. By treating your animal compassionately, ensuring that handling is done in a calm, patient, kind way, this will result in a happier animal where the behavioural domain is met. It is equally important to allow an animal with opportunities to exhibit normal behaviour, such as social interactions with its own species, foraging and grazing behaviour and locomotion.

The "Five Domains" model for assessing animal welfare

Examples of positive & negative experiences within the Five Domains framework

Comparing the Five Freedoms and Five Domains of Animal Welfare Frameworks

The five freedoms aims to ensure that the animal is completely free of all the specific negative areas, and this can be seen as unrealistic or difficult to achieve, especially with working animals or in Low- or Middle-Income Countries (LMICs). Whereas the five domains considers the fulfilment of more domains as more important for the animal than improvement in a few separate indicators. The other key difference between the two frameworks for assessing welfare, is that the five freedoms focuses on avoidance of negative suffering, and views welfare as a potentially negative concept, whereas the five domains focuses on promoting positive welfare and views welfare as encapsulating the experiences, positive and negative, that animals have over their lifetime.

With the five domains, the crucial element is that each domain is addressed in some way. Gradual improvements in all five domains are more important than a big, or many, improvements in one domain, whilst other domains go unmet. For owners struggling to determine how they can meet each domain, some real-life examples are given below. Creating opportunities to meet elements within each of the five domains should be prioritized by communities with animals.

“The overall objective is to provide opportunities for animals to ‘thrive’ not simply ‘survive’…” [4]

1.3 Animals Feelings and Needs

Not only do animals have senses such as sight, hearing, etc. but they can also experience emotions associated with those senses, such as taking pleasure in eating tasty food, comfort, and security by socializing with others of their species etc., which is why animals are recognized as sentient beings. Animal sentience is defined as recognizing animals as sentient beings that can be aware of their own feelings and emotions. This includes both having the ability to have both negative feelings like pain, frustration, and fear as well as positive feelings like comfort, enjoyment, and contentment.

One of the best ways to understand what animals need is to observe them.

People and animals are similar in their needs and in their basic feelings or emotions. They are likely to feel quite like you about things which affect their needs and their daily life. Think about what you need to have to have a good life and be happy in terms of your environment, health, nutrition, and behaviour? What do you need to experience and be provided with?