Scientific understanding of bivalve sentience and welfare is evolving with implications for how oyster, mussel and clam farming is assessed and regulated.
Bivalve welfare occupies a genuinely uncertain area of animal welfare science. Unlike the emerging consensus on fish and crustacean sentience, evidence for bivalve capacity for suffering is weaker and more contested. However scientific uncertainty about consciousness is not the same as evidence of absence. The precautionary principle suggests minimising unnecessary potential suffering even in species with uncertain moral status is prudent, without requiring treating bivalves identically to vertebrates.