Billions of shrimp are slaughtered annually without welfare consideration. Emerging evidence of shrimp sentience is driving demand for more humane slaughter approaches.
The scale of shrimp production makes welfare improvements in this industry potentially among the most impactful in terms of aggregate suffering reduction. With over 400 billion farmed shrimp slaughtered annually, even small probability of sentience at individual level translates to enormous aggregate welfare concern. Current slaughter methods were developed without welfare consideration and are not designed to minimize suffering. The development and adoption of more humane slaughter methods for shrimp - particularly electrical stunning - represents a high-leverage opportunity for welfare improvement at the scale of hundreds of billions of animals.