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‘Yes, Shrimp Matter’: A private equity analyst left his work to devote his life advocating for shrimps

Despite their size, shrimp are the proverbial 'elephant in the room' when discussing animal welfare in food systems. Shrimp aren't high on the list of animals most people think about when they consider the harms of industrial agriculture. Why worry about shrimp in a world where so many mammals and birds live in torturous conditions due to industrial agriculture? The answer is that shrimp farming dwarfs other forms of animal agriculture by sheer numbers. An estimated 230 billion shrimp of various species are alive in farms at any given moment. Globally, 27 trillion shrimp are caught in the wild every year, compared to 1.5 trillion fish. These numbers wouldn’t matter if shrimp didn’t have the internal experience associated with suffering, but a growing body of evidence suggests that they do. A comprehensive review commissioned by the U.K. government found strong evidence of sentience in decapods, which includes shrimp.

ANDRES JIMENEZ ZORRILLA: The transition from analyzing real estate deals to advocating for some of the smallest animals in our food system feels counterintuitive, to say the least. But it was the same muscle I used converting derelict office buildings into luxury hotels that allowed me to appreciate an enormous opportunity overlooked by almost everyone, including those in the animal welfare space. I still spend my days analyzing returns (though they’re now measured in suffering averted). I still work to identify mutual opportunities with industry partners. Perhaps most importantly, I still view it as paramount to build trust with people who — initially — sit on opposite sides of the table. After years of practicing my response to the inevitable raised eyebrows, I now sum it up simply: ignoring shrimp welfare would have been both negligent and reckless.

This may seem like an extreme stance. Shrimp aren’t high on the list of animals most people think about when they consider the harms of industrial agriculture. For a long time — up until the last few years — most researchers assumed shrimp couldn’t even feel pain. Yet as philosopher Jonathan Birch explains in The Edge of Sentience, whenever a creature is a sentience candidate1 and we cannot rule out its capacity for conscious experience, we have a responsibility to take its potential for suffering seriously. We don’t know what it is like to be a shrimp. We do know that if shrimp can suffer, they are doing so in the hundreds of billions.

Why worry about shrimp in a world where so many mammals and birds live in torturous conditions due to industrial agriculture? The answer is that shrimp farming dwarfs other forms of animal agriculture by sheer numbers. An estimated 230 billion shrimp of various species are alive in farms at any given moment — compared to the 779 million pigs, 1.55 billion cattle, 33 billion chickens, and 125 billion farmed fish.

Shrimp are harvested at around 6 months of age, which puts the estimated number slaughtered annually for human consumption at 440 billion. For perspective: that’s more than four times the number of humans who have ever walked the earth. At sea, the numbers are even more staggeringly shrimpy. Globally, 27 trillion shrimp are caught in the wild every year, compared to 1.5 trillion fish. Despite their size, shrimp are the proverbial “elephant in the room” when discussing animal welfare in food systems…

These numbers wouldn’t matter if shrimp didn’t have the internal experience associated with suffering, but a growing body of evidence suggests that they do. A comprehensive review commissioned by the U.K. government found strong evidence of sentience in decapods, which includes shrimp, lobsters, prawns, and crabs…

In modern shrimp farming, life begins in a hatchery born to a mother who has endured one of the industry’s most severe practices: eyestalk ablation. This procedure involves physically cutting off the appendage from which her eyes protrude — imagine having your optic nerve severed and your entire eye removed, all without anaesthesia. This mutilation, designed to induce spawning, sets the tone for a life marked by intensive farming practices.

At just a few days old, the young shrimp is transferred to a grow-out pond where it will spend the next three to six months of its life. In super-intensive systems, which represent a non-negligible portion of the industry in some regions, 500 to 1,000 shrimp are packed into each square meter. For a creature that grows to 13 centimeters in length, this density makes it impossible to perform natural behaviors like burrowing or resting on the bottom. Instead, the shrimp must swim continuously in the crowded space.12

Poor water quality poses a persistent threat, regardless of stocking density. Just as humans need clean air to breathe, shrimp require clean water to survive. Their environment is often impacted by fluctuating oxygen levels and the presence of toxic gases — ammonia and hydrogen sulfide from accumulated waste, to name two. In densely packed systems, these challenges become especially dangerous as a single water quality mishap can rapidly cascade into a mass mortality event. These conditions weaken their immune systems, leading to widespread disease. In what is considered a successful harvest, 20 to 30% of the population may die before reaching market size…

The future of shrimp welfare is one of the most underexplored areas in modern animal rights, but its potential for impact is immense. We are only at the beginning of a movement that could fundamentally shift the way we treat aquatic animals — both on farms and for those caught in the ocean… We stand at a pivotal moment where meaningful changes can be made. The choices we make today will shape the future of animal welfare for generations to come. And while shrimp may be small, the moral imperative to protect them looms large. The time to act is now. SOURCE…

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