Giant freshwater prawns are farmed across Southeast Asia and South Asia. Their sentience status and welfare needs are increasingly recognised in aquaculture discussions.
Freshwater prawn welfare is an emerging area of aquaculture ethics. Following UK and EU legislative recognition of decapod crustacean sentience, there is increasing pressure to apply welfare principles to prawn farming and processing. In production systems, aggressive interactions between prawns, particularly among males competing for dominance, cause injury and stress. Crowding increases disease susceptibility. Processing methods including live boiling, splitting, or freezing without stunning may cause significant suffering if prawns are sentient, as evidence increasingly suggests. Developing humane stunning methods for prawns is a research priority.