The post-harvest handling of farmed shrimp involves practices that may cause significant suffering. Improving handling at slaughter is an emerging focus of aquatic animal welfare advocacy.
Shrimp occupy an interesting position in the welfare debate - small enough that their individual suffering is easy to dismiss, but numerous enough that the aggregate suffering could be immense if they have meaningful pain experiences. Scientific evidence suggests that decapod crustaceans including shrimp have at minimum the neural architecture to experience something analogous to pain. Current industry slaughter practices, including live boiling and brine asphyxiation, are poorly designed to minimize potential suffering. The development of electrical stunning and other more humane methods represents progress, but adoption requires both consumer and regulatory pressure on an industry that currently treats shrimp welfare as irrelevant.