How growing evidence of crayfish sentience raises welfare questions about their use in aquaculture and the wild-caught trade.
Crayfish welfare is at the frontier of animal ethics, where scientific evidence for sentience is increasingly robust but welfare practice has not yet caught up. Like crabs and lobsters, crayfish have been found to have the neurological capacity for pain-like experiences and to show behavioural responses that suggest genuine aversion to harmful stimuli. The inclusion of decapods in UK animal sentience law reflects a growing scientific consensus that these animals deserve moral consideration. For consumers of crayfish and for the aquaculture industry, this means that the welfare of slaughter and production conditions deserves attention that has historically been absent.