Eyestalk ablation — the removal of one eye from female shrimp to stimulate reproduction — is standard practice in commercial shrimp farming and raises serious welfare concerns given evidence of crustacean sentience.
Eyestalk ablation is among the most concerning practices in aquaculture from a welfare perspective. The procedure causes direct tissue damage to an organ that almost certainly has sensory function, in an animal that scientific evidence increasingly supports as sentient. The scale is enormous — hundreds of millions of broodstock females undergo ablation annually across global shrimp hatcheries. Unlike many aquaculture welfare issues where welfare-positive alternatives are complex and expensive, non-ablation breeding programs represent a technically feasible alternative that some producers have already implemented. The barrier is economic inertia and lack of regulatory requirement. Consumer pressure and certification standards requiring ablation-free sourcing are the primary drivers of change.