Methods for quantifying and prioritizing shrimp welfare threats

Preface

In this document, we estimate the intensity, duration, and prevalence of pain caused to farmed shrimp by 18 welfare threats. You can download the code we use from our GitHub Repository.

We assess only the ongrowing stage of shrimp farming (which includes the postlarval and juvenile–subadult life stages), because the vast majority of research and on-farm surveys are conducted at this stage. Hatcheries (which supply ongrowing farms) are less studied and have different welfare requirements (Pedrazzani et al., 2023), which would require its own assessment for pain quantification.

We focus only on penaeid species as these account for 92% of all farmed shrimp (Waldhorn & Autric, 2023) and because there is a greater volume of aquaculture research available for these species. The two most commonly farmed species are P. vannamei and P. monodon.