Updating the Five Provisions: Aligning Welfare-Focused Care with the Five Domains Model

The Five Domains Model has become one of the most widely adopted frameworks in animal welfare science and practice. The Model is now applied in a range of ways; among the most prominent are (1) as a framework for systematic and structured welfare assessment and (2) as an organising structure for planning and communicating appropriate (i.e., welfare-focused) care provisions, education, and standards. This paper focuses on these two applications and proposes a corresponding update to the affiliated Five Provisions and Welfare Aims. Specifically, we revise: (1) Provision 4 from “Appropriate Behaviour” to “Appropriate Choices” to reflect the 2020 update of the Model incorporating human–animal interactions and the 2023 operationalisation of agency in Domain 4; (2) Provision 2 from “Good Environment” to “Good Living Space” to resolve ambiguity with Domain 4’s “Interactions with the Environment”; and (3) Provision 5 from “Positive Mental Experiences” to “Integrated Care,” which captures consistent delivery of the first four provisions over time and across all those who interact with the animal. This update also pairs Provision 5 with a welfare aim that specifies the integrated mental state the animal should experience as a result. This change makes the distinction between care (provisions) and welfare (aims) consistent throughout the framework. It also makes explicit the integrative role of Provision 5, which parallels Domain 5’s role in the Model. We then describe the reasoning process that distinguishes welfare assessment from welfare-focused care provision. Welfare assessment uses the domain structure as a reasoning pathway, with the assessor using indicators and their impacts in Domains 1 to 4 to infer named mental (affective) experiences in Domain 5. Planning and communicating appropriate (i.e., welfare-focused) care uses the same structure to organise information about what is provided to animals, without executing the inferential step to Domain 5. Drawing on examples from organisations that use the Model for different purposes, we show that both applications are legitimate but produce different outputs. The Five Provisions framework, with its dual structure of provisions paired with welfare aims, serves the care planning and communication function more effectively than does the Model’s domain structure alone. Recognising these different uses also helps to locate where recent critiques of the Model apply and where they do not. Finally, we propose that the provisions and welfare aims framework can supplement “needs” language in legislation and policy to better reflect the distinction between animal care and animal welfare.