Early mortality syndrome and other diseases devastate farmed shrimp populations, causing mass mortality events that raise welfare concerns while driving production losses across Southeast Asian aquaculture.
Disease events in farmed shrimp create acute welfare crises of enormous scale. Mass mortality events from EMS or WSSV kill hundreds of millions of individuals, with the dying process involving physiological deterioration that may involve aversive experience even under uncertainty about shrimp sentience. The precautionary welfare perspective suggests that minimizing disease occurrence through good husbandry — appropriate stocking density, water quality management, biosecurity — reduces both production losses and potential welfare harm simultaneously. Disease prevention strategies including biosecure hatcheries, SPF broodstock programs, and probiotic supplementation achieve welfare and production goals simultaneously. The frequent occurrence of mass mortality events in shrimp farming reflects production practices optimized for short-term productivity at the expense of resilience and, under any probability of shrimp sentience, welfare.