The slaughter of farmed shrimp receives almost no welfare attention despite the enormous numbers involved and emerging evidence for crustacean sentience.
Shrimp slaughter welfare is perhaps the most neglected welfare issue in the global food system. The combination of extreme scale, crustacean sentience uncertainty, and complete absence of slaughter standards means that hundreds of billions of potentially sentient animals may be killed each year in ways that cause avoidable suffering. The precautionary principle - given the scale and the uncertainty - argues for developing and implementing more humane slaughter standards as a priority. Clove oil anaesthesia before live cooking is achievable at both commercial and domestic scales and represents a reasonable precautionary welfare measure.