Øistein Thorsen
CEO
Øistein is a passionate advocate for resilient, ethical and regenerative food systems, with a focus on animal-based production. Raised in East Africa, he witnessed firsthand the devastating impact of food system failures, inspiring a career dedicated to sustainability. As FAI’s CEO, Øistein advises some the world’s largest brands, leveraging science and expertise to drive meaningful impact for people, animals and the planet.
In his role he has supported the regenerative transition of FAI’s beef grazing farm, developed and delivered regenerative training courses and field visits for executives, and designed regenerative initiatives focused on beef, dairy and leather supply chains.
Øistein is a University of London graduate in Development and African Studies and holds a master’s in international political economics from the London School of Economics (LSE), both undertaken to better understand the root causes of poverty, conflict and famine.
He began to gain a deeper and more specific appreciation of food’s potential power to heal and connect us with each other, our cultures and our planet in the early 2000s. This led to his vision of helping solve interconnected social and environmental crises through the promotion of inner and outer regeneration; a vision he has been pursuing at FAI since 2012.
Øistein is a Norwegian and US citizen who has lived, worked and studied in Kenya, Sudan, Norway, Ethiopia, the UK and USA, and currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.
FAI recommends companies base their animal welfare policies on the Five Domains framework, designed to facilitate systematic, structured, comprehensive and coherent assessment of animal welfare.
The framework focuses on four practical areas affecting animal welfare — nutrition, environment, health and behavioural interactions, explicitly linking these areas to a fifth domain of ‘mental state’, integrating animal sentience into the model. This makes it a robust and commercially useful model for setting policy, prioritising action and tracking progress.
From Five Freedoms to Five Domains
For over half a century, the Five Freedoms have served as the ethical bedrock of global animal welfare policy, research and practice. The foundation for the Five Freedoms was laid by the 1965 Brambell Report. The report was commissioned by the UK government in response to the growing public concern about the post-war industrialisation of livestock farming, sparked by Ruth Harrison’s Animal Machines. While these high-level aspirations have shaped industry standards and public expectations, they are paradoxically both unrealistic and unambitious when applied as a prescription for animal welfare in corporate supply chains.
FAI recognises both the comprehensive influence the Five Freedoms have had on farm animal welfare policy worldwide and that since their introduction our understanding of how we assess welfare has evolved. Because of this, we recommend companies now base their animal welfare policies on the Five Domains framework, developed in 1994 by Professor David Mellor1.
1. Mellor DJ, Reid CSW. Improving the week-being of animals in the research environment. Australian and New Zealand Council for the Care of Animals in Research and Teaching. 1994: 3-18
FAI believes the Five Domains offers four main benefits over the Five Freedoms:
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Mental State Integration
Explicit integration of the mental state into the model leads to acknowledgement and recognition of animal sentience.
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Practical Integration
The focus on four practical farm management areas — nutrition, environment, health and behavioural interactions — makes welfare accessible and relevant to farmers, stock people and processors. This shift enables organisations to communicate more effectively, engage suppliers through best-practice guidelines and demonstrate a genuine commitment to ongoing practical improvement.
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Clearer Language
Communication of the Five Domains avoids confusing ‘freedom from’ language. Although the original Five Freedoms framework did not intend to represent absolute attainable states, but rather that animals should be kept “as free as possible” from the negative states identified, the language may create the mistaken expectation such states of freedom are fully achievable. This leaves food businesses exposed to unintentional welfare-washing, inviting criticism when real-world practices inevitably fall short of the ‘freedom from’ promise.
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Scientific Structure
The Five Domains framework provides companies with a scientifically valid structure to assess their supply chains, set policies and track progress in animal welfare and shifts the animal welfare conversation away from solely focusing on avoiding harm and towards how we can provide opportunities for animals to experience positive affective or emotional states.
The table below provides examples of input and outcome measures relevant to farm animal systems, related to each of the first four domains of animal welfare. All these areas affect the mental state of the farmed animal (the fifth domain).
| Domain | Inputs | Outcomes | 5. Mental state |
| 1. Health |
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| 2. Nutrition |
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| 3. Environment |
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| 4. Behavioural interactions |
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Examples of input and output measure for the five domains of animal welfare.
Are you still unclear about how the Five Domains framework is right for your supply chain?
FAI can provide strategic, science-based support to review your approach to welfare, setting realistic priorities and outcomes measures to secure supply chain resilience.
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