Selective breeding programs for farmed prawns increasingly target disease resistance and stress tolerance alongside growth, with emerging evidence that genetic selection can meaningfully improve welfare outcomes.
Prawn genetics represents a relatively underexplored lever for improving welfare at scale. Unlike modifications to husbandry or slaughter methods which require individual farm adoption, genetic improvements propagate automatically through commercial breeding programs to all farms using those lines. Disease resistance breeding reduces the proportion of animals experiencing infectious disease burden at any given time, representing a genuine welfare improvement even when individual prawn sentience remains scientifically debated. Investment in prawn welfare genetics deserves greater attention from both industry and welfare-focused funders.