The Five Domains

The Five Domains Model of Animal Welfare was developed by Professor David Mellor and Dr Cam Reid in 1994 to provide a modern framework for assessing animal welfare. Unlike the traditional Five Freedoms, the Five Domains model evaluates both the physical and mental wellbeing of animals, helping ensure that they not only avoid suffering but can also experience positive states such as comfort, curiosity, and contentment. 

The model assesses welfare across five key areas: 

• Nutrition – ensuring an adequate, balanced diet and access to clean water. 

• Environment – providing appropriate shelter, space, temperature, air quality, and safe surroundings. 

• Health – maintaining good physical health, freedom from disease, injury, and functional impairment. 

• Behaviour – allowing animals to express natural and rewarding behaviours. 

• Mental State – considering how the first four domains influence the animal’s emotional experiences, both negative and positive. 

Learn more about the Five Domains Model of Animal Welfare in detail on the MDPI article by Mellor (2016).

Why move from the Five Freedoms to the Five Domains? 

For over 50 years, the Five Freedoms of Animal Welfare have shaped how we care for and protect animals — focusing on freedom from hunger, pain, discomfort, and distress. But animal welfare science has evolved. The Five Domains Model of Animal Welfare, developed by Professor David Mellor, offers a modern, evidence-based approach that goes beyond preventing suffering. It recognises that animals are sentient beings who can experience positive emotions such as comfort, curiosity, and joy. By adopting the Five Domains, we can better assess an animal’s physical and mental wellbeing — ensuring animals not only avoid harm but also enjoy lives truly worth living. 

How will we move to the Five Domains? 

Shifting from the Five Freedoms to the Five Domains means reframing policy and practice from simply preventing negatives to actively creating positive experiences — that requires rewriting codes of practice and guidance to be outcome-focused (nutrition, environment, health, behavioural interactions and mental state), training inspectors and frontline staff in assessment-for-positive welfare, deploying practical monitoring tools and metrics (for example apps and outcome scoring based on the Five Domains), and funding incentives and advisory support so keepers (including farmers) can meet higher, evidence-based standards.  

The Five Domains framework — developed from work in New Zealand and now set out in the 2020 synthesis by Mellor and colleagues — gives a science-backed structure for those changes. (Enlighten Publications, opens a PDF)

Organisations and jurisdictions are already moving in this direction: SPCA and veterinary groups in New Zealand and Australia use the Five Domains for certification and guidance, researchers and NGOs in the EU and UK have been translating the model into assessment tools and training, and the Scottish SPCA has explicitly called for Scottish farm-animal codes to be updated to reflect the Five Domains. (kb.rspca.org.au)  

Practical progress therefore exists, but full transition depends on coordinated policy updates, workforce capacity-building, routine outcome monitoring, and committed resourcing to help animal keepers implement changes on the ground. (MDPI)