Biosecurity failures in shrimp farming cause mass mortality events and chronic disease that affect billions of individual animals and require integrated management approaches.
Shrimp biosecurity failures represent massive acute welfare events - disease outbreaks kill billions of individuals, and the process of mass mortality from viral or bacterial disease likely involves suffering even if shrimp sentience remains uncertain. Beyond acute events, chronic subclinical disease in poorly managed ponds compromises shrimp health continuously. The precautionary welfare principle suggests that preventing disease and maintaining good water quality serves shrimp welfare regardless of certainty about their capacity to suffer. The antibiotic resistance implications of poor biosecurity extend welfare concerns to human and animal populations beyond the farm.