Shrimp welfare is an emerging area of research with billions of animals farmed annually under conditions that may cause significant suffering if shrimp have capacity for pain experience.
Shrimp welfare represents the intersection of enormous production scale and profound uncertainty about pain experience. Farmed at densities incompatible with natural behavior, subjected to eyestalk ablation (a painful procedure performed without analgesia to induce reproduction), and slaughtered without stunning, commercially farmed shrimp may be among the most welfare-compromised farmed animals if they have significant capacity for negative experience. The scientific evidence for shrimp pain experience is less developed than for crabs or lobsters, but they show nociceptive behaviors and have nervous systems capable of processing noxious stimuli. The precautionary argument for improving shrimp welfare is strengthened by the scale of production - even small probabilities of significant pain experience, multiplied by trillions of animals, represents enormous potential welfare impact.