Bay scallop aquaculture is a growing industry on the US East Coast and questions about scallop sentience and welfare are relevant as production scales up.
Current scientific understanding does not confirm that scallops have pain-relevant neural architecture, but the debate is ongoing. Welfare concerns in production include handling injuries during seeding and harvesting, air exposure causing desiccation stress, and predation pressure through cage failures. The precautionary principle suggests minimising unnecessary harm even where sentience is uncertain.