Farmed prawns face significant welfare challenges across the production cycle, with eyestalk ablation, crowding, and handling stress among the most significant concerns.
Farmed prawn welfare encompasses practices that are standard across the industry but which welfare scientists consider ethically problematic given growing evidence of crustacean sentience. Eyestalk ablation — severing or crushing the eyestalk of broodstock females to accelerate reproductive maturation — is painful and disorienting for an animal whose endocrine system is concentrated in this organ. Crowding in grow-out ponds creates conditions analogous to intensive livestock production at its least welfare-positive. The recognition of decapod crustacean sentience in the UK Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act 2022 has catalysed welfare standard development, but implementation across globally dispersed prawn farming is a long-term challenge.