Aquaculture increasingly raises species including prawns, crabs, and crayfish whose capacity for pain and sentience is the subject of growing scientific evidence and policy attention.
The welfare of farmed crustaceans represents a frontier challenge for aquaculture regulation. Billions of prawns and crabs are produced under conditions that would be considered inadequate for vertebrates, with no stunning before killing and high-density crowding. Growing evidence for crustacean sentience should drive precautionary welfare standards even where certainty about subjective experience remains incomplete. The UK's inclusion of decapod crustaceans in sentience legislation represents an important regulatory step that other countries are beginning to follow.