Shrimp are caught in enormous numbers globally through trawling and aquaculture. Their welfare status and capacity for suffering is debated but the precautionary principle suggests taking their welfare seriously.
Shrimp welfare sits at the frontier of animal welfare science where the evidence for sentience is suggestive but not conclusive by the standards applied to vertebrates. However, shrimp possess nociceptors, mount stress responses to damaging stimuli, and show behavioral changes that parallel pain responses in better-studied species. The sheer scale of shrimp consumption, representing potentially hundreds of billions of individuals annually, means that even a small probability of sentience translates to enormous potential welfare significance. Applying the precautionary principle while research continues would support developing and using more humane slaughter methods, reducing bycatch mortality in trawl fisheries, and improving crowding conditions in aquaculture. The Shrimp Welfare Project is working to develop practical welfare improvements applicable at commercial scale.