Shrimp are farmed in enormous volumes globally and typically transported and slaughtered live. Evidence for shrimp nociception and potential sentience has grown substantially, yet slaughter welfare remains almost entirely unregulated.
The evidence base for shrimp sentience is more uncertain than for fish, but the precautionary principle supports welfare consideration at the scale of global production. If shrimp experience even brief nociceptive suffering during live boiling, the welfare impact is enormous given production volumes. Rapid chilling to clinical anaesthesia before processing is a welfare-improving method that is technically feasible and increasingly adopted in welfare-conscious supply chains.