Shrimp are the world's most valuable aquaculture commodity, but welfare at harvest including crowding, live transport, and killing methods receives little attention despite growing evidence of their capacity to experience stress.
Shrimp welfare at harvest is poorly regulated globally. Standard practices including crowding, aerial exposure, ice slurry immersion, and live transport without stunning likely cause significant suffering if shrimp have any capacity for pain experience - which growing evidence suggests they may. The precautionary principle suggests adopting more humane handling and killing methods rather than waiting for scientific certainty. The scale of shrimp production means even small improvements in welfare could affect hundreds of billions of animals.