Freshwater prawns (Macrobrachium species) are farmed extensively in Asia and are increasingly recognised as potentially sentient. Their welfare in production systems remains virtually unaddressed.
Freshwater prawn welfare is even less studied than marine shrimp welfare, despite comparable evidence of sentience and similar production scales. The aggressive, cannibalistic behaviour observed at high stocking densities in farms represents both a welfare problem (injury and stress) and a management challenge that farmers currently address through density reduction rather than welfare-informed husbandry design. As with marine shrimp, the legal recognition of decapod sentience in the UK creates a regulatory obligation that currently outpaces actual welfare standards in production. The gap between legal recognition and practical welfare protection for farmed prawns is one of the largest in current animal welfare law.