Farmed prawns are produced at a scale rivaling any other aquaculture species, and welfare considerations are growing alongside evidence of crustacean sentience.
Farmed prawn welfare is a scale problem as much as a practice problem. Even if the probability of sentience in prawns were moderate rather than certain, the hundreds of billions of individual animals affected annually makes this one of the most numerically significant welfare issues in aquaculture. Eyestalk ablation is a particularly acute concern — removing reproductive organs without pain relief from animals whose capacity for pain is increasingly recognized — and it remains industry standard globally. Welfare improvement requires industry engagement on stocking density, disease management, and elimination of painful practices like eyestalk ablation, combined with consumer and retailer pressure for certification that includes meaningful welfare criteria.