By International Council for Animal Welfare
The UK upscale supermarket chain Waitrose & Partners commits to introduce electrical stunning for all their farmed prawns by the end of 2026. This move follows negotiations with the International Council on Animal Welfare (ICAW) and will replace the controversial practice of leaving the animals to suffocate in ice slurry while remaining conscious.
Once implemented, this will spare an estimated 18 million prawns per year an average of three hours of disabling-equivalent pain (McKay & McAuliffe, 2024 and ICAW estimation). Disabling pain is so strong that animals cannot focus on anything else and would need powerful drugs to endure it (Welfare Footprint Project).
Many customers do not yet know how their prawns are slaughtered. When confronted with an infographic however, a large majority of Brits agree that shrimps deserve to be spared unnecessary suffering and that the suffocation in ice slurry is “a big problem”, according to a 2023 survey.
Activists Call on Co-Op and Iceland to Follow
UK retailers Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Marks & Spencer, and Ocado have already publicly committed to phase out both eyestalk ablation and introduce electrical stunning.
“Supermarkets are responsible for how they treat the animals in their supply chain. We urge other retailers like Co-op and Iceland to take action and ban ablated & suffocated prawns from their shelves” states Justine Audemard, Head of Negotiations at the International Council for Animal Welfare.
Background
Waitrose was one of the first supermarkets to phase out eyestalk ablation for prawns by the end of 2023. Working together with Stirling University and the Seajoy Group they demonstrated that the widely spread practice of cutting mother prawns eyes off to enhance egg production was unnecessary and counter-productive (John Lewis Partnership).
In their Crustacean Welfare Policy, they had already acknowledged that for prawns “electrical stunning is […] the most humane method of slaughter” (John Lewis Partnership). One year later, following extensive negotiations with the International Council for Animal Welfare, Waitrose now commits to implement this for all their farmed prawns supply by the end of 2026.
Prawns Recognized as Sentient
The UK government acknowledges that prawns are sentient: a 2021 report by the London School of Economics summarizes that there is clear scientific evidence for the fact that prawns and other decapod crustaceans feel pain and distress. However, in commercial farming these animals are still treated as if they were vegetables, with no regard to their needs.
