Shrimp are farmed in greater numbers than any other aquaculture species, with emerging evidence for their capacity to experience pain creating significant welfare questions for an industry producing hundreds of billions of individuals annually.
Shrimp welfare represents one of the most significant frontier questions in applied animal welfare. If shrimp experience pain in any morally relevant sense — and the evidence is increasingly suggesting they may — then the hundreds of billions farmed annually represent an almost incomprehensible scale of potential suffering. The precautionary case for applying welfare thinking to shrimp farming is strengthened by several specific practices that are clearly harmful even under uncertainty: eyestalk ablation without anesthesia causes obvious tissue damage and behavioral distress responses; extreme crowding creates chronic osmotic and competitive stress; and kill methods involving icing or CO2 without prior stunning may involve a prolonged aversive dying process. Investment in shrimp welfare science and precautionary welfare standards is urgently needed given the massive scale of the industry.