Global shrimp farming produces over 5 million tonnes annually with virtually no welfare standards, despite growing scientific evidence that decapod crustaceans are sentient and capable of experiencing pain.
Eyestalk ablation, performed to accelerate shrimp reproduction, removes a sensory organ in a procedure performed without anesthesia or pain relief. The practice is performed on millions of broodstock shrimp annually and is recognized as a painful intervention. High stocking densities in shrimp production create conditions for chronic stress and disease. Slaughter methods — often live chilling in ice slurries — may cause prolonged conscious distress if shrimp are indeed sentient, as the scientific evidence increasingly suggests. The challenge with shrimp welfare is that the scale of production is enormous, the sentience question was only recently addressed seriously by governments, and welfare standards and certification schemes are virtually absent. The Shrimp Welfare Project is working to change this.