Shrimp are killed in the largest numbers of any farmed animal group. The scale of shrimp slaughter combined with growing evidence of crustacean sentience makes pre-slaughter welfare an urgent concern.
Farmed shrimp present the most extreme welfare challenge in terms of scale: hundreds of billions of potentially sentient animals are killed annually using methods that would be considered unacceptable if applied to vertebrates. The uncertainty about shrimp sentience is genuine but is rapidly narrowing as research reveals more about their nervous system complexity and pain-related behavior. The precautionary welfare argument is strongest here precisely because the numbers are so large: if shrimp can suffer, we are causing suffering at a scale that dwarfs all other forms of animal use combined. The Shrimp Welfare Project represents the most serious industry-facing effort to address this problem, working collaboratively with producers to develop feasible welfare improvements.