Project summary

Shrimp Welfare Project is an organisation of people who believe that shrimps are capable of suffering and deserve our moral consideration [1]. We aim to cost-effectively reduce the suffering of billions of shrimps and envision a world where shrimps don't suffer needlessly.

• Programme: our current most impactful intervention is to place electrical stunners with producers ($60k/stunner): We have signed agreements with 2 producers willing and able to use electrical stunning technology as part of their slaughter process which will materially reduce the acute suffering at the last few minutes / hours of shrimps lives. Collectively, these 2 agreements will impact more than half a billion animals per year at a rate of more than 4,000 shrimps/dollar/annum. Please take a look at our blog post on the first agreement here. 

• We are in advanced negotiations with 2 more producers which would take the number of animals to more than 1 billion shrimps per annum.

• See our back-of-the-envelope calculation for the number of shrimps and cost-effectiveness analysis here

Project goals

• Simplified end-game of this programme: the interim goal of placing these stunners with selected producers in different contexts/systems is to remove some perceived obstacles to the industry and show major retailers and other shrimp buyers that electrical stunning is something they can demand from their supply chain 

• The ultimate goal is for electrical stunning to be:

  • widely adopted by medium to large shrimp producers in their slaughter process (pushed by their buyers), 

  • included by certifiers in their standards, and eventually

  • considered (eventually) to be an obvious requirement by legislators when drafting policy (e.g. EU review of decapod welfare in 2028-2030)

How will this funding be used?

• Room for more funding: Our 2023 general budget is fully funded so any additional money would go to this programme. We believe we can place 3 stunners during 2023 which would mean a potential to use an additional $180k at an extremely cost-effective rate of >2,000 animals helped per dollar per year.

• During 2024, we estimate we could place up to 12 stunners ($60x12 = $720k)

How could this project be actively harmful?

• London School of Economics report [2] - Only had “medium confidence” that electrical stunning renders decapods unconscious (although “no confidence” for ice slurry which is the current slaughter method).

• The “Weineck” study [3] - The only published academic study on the electrical stunning of shrimps only stunned a single shrimp at a time

• Tesco/Hilton case study [4] - ~2% of shrimps continued to demonstrate heart and gill bailer activity after electrical stunning

• University of Stirling study [5] - To address these uncertainties, Open Philantropy is funding a study to optimise electrical stunning parameters for shrimps

What other funding is this person or project getting?

• Open Philanthropy and the EA Animal Welfare Fund are funding our operations roughly at 60/40, respectively. 

• We are attempting to fundraise for the stunner programme independently from our two main funders as we have been advised by them that we should diversify our funding pool