Welfare considerations for farmed prawns and shrimp, covering sentience evidence, stocking density, disease challenges, and the Shrimp Welfare Project's approach to this high-volume sector.
Farmed shrimp presents the largest-scale welfare question in all of aquaculture — the 450 billion individual animals produced annually vastly exceeds any other farmed species in number. The welfare question is directly linked to the sentience question: if shrimp have even a modest probability of morally relevant experience, the aggregate welfare implications of their production are enormous. The UK recognition of decapod crustaceans as sentient in 2022 represents a landmark scientific-regulatory conclusion that shrimp welfare must be taken seriously. The Shrimp Welfare Project has emerged as a specialized organization addressing this challenge, working directly with producers on practical welfare improvements including better disease management that reduces mass mortality suffering, stocking density reduction, and improved slaughter methods. Disease management is particularly important: WSSV and other pathogens cause mass mortality events that involve an enormous amount of potential suffering per event. Improving biosecurity, disease resistance breeding, and pathogen monitoring reduces this suffering at scale. The fundamental welfare challenge of shrimp production — its enormous volume combined with genuine uncertainty about sentience — makes it arguably the highest-priority welfare problem per research dollar invested.