Moral uncertainty about the extent and nature of animal sentience is relevant to welfare decision-making, with approaches from moral philosophy offering guidance for acting under uncertainty.
Moral uncertainty about animal sentience is not a justification for inaction on welfare, but rather a reason for proportionate caution. When the probability that an animal experiences suffering is uncertain, the appropriate response is to weight potential welfare interventions by the probability of sentience and the scale of potential suffering. This approach has practical implications: even if shrimp have only a 10% probability of experiencing significant pain, the billions used annually make welfare consideration numerically significant. As neuroscience and behaviour research progressively resolve uncertainty in favour of broader sentience, precautionary welfare protection remains the ethically defensible default.