Animal Welfare Footprint Institute

We recently became of the Animal Welfare Footprint Institute and they have some very interesting ideas. To quote them, they are trying to quantify animal welfare using biologically meaningful, relatable and comparable metric, applicable across contexts, environments and species: time in affective states (negative or positive) of different intensities.

One interesting aspect is that they don't just look at the negative aspects of animal welfare such as pain and discomfort, but also positives too - see Quantifying Positive Animal Welfare in Individuals and Populations – Welfare Footprint Institute

Such work should hugely important not only in assessing animal welfare directly from their work, but will also feed into other animal welfare assessments such as the Five Domains, or the Five Needs used in the Animal Welfare Act 2006.