Over the past twenty years, prawn farming has grown significantly worldwide. At the same time, consumer interest in ethical and environmental issues has increased. Whilst animal welfare is already assessed more comprehensively in other areas of aquaculture, such as fish farming, research into prawns is still in its infancy. The methods used for rearing, stunning and slaughtering are the subject of heavy criticism. Against this backdrop, the Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB) has now published a freely available IGB Manual. It introduces an easy-to-use assessment system that allows the welfare of prawns to be evaluated on the basis of externally visible characteristics.
Animal welfare aspects in prawn farming
The publication focuses on the farming of the white shrimp (Litopenaeus vannamei) and is aimed in particular at practitioners, companies and associations in the aquaculture sector, with a view to promoting animal welfare in shrimp farming. For prawns and other decapods, such as crabs and lobsters, key animal welfare aspects include farming practices, as well as transport, stocking, husbandry and slaughter. The index combines the authors’ own research findings with results from previous studies and provides detailed descriptions and photographic material to enable a standardised assessment. This is an important step towards improving animal welfare in prawn farming, as animal welfare can now be assessed according to uniform standards, enabling measures to improve animal welfare to be implemented quickly and comprehensively where necessary.
Research collaboration
The project from which the guidelines emerged is a research collaboration between the IGB, the Alfred Wegener Institute, the Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research and Humboldt-Universität (HU). Representing HU were Dr Sven Würtz (Thaer Institute of Agricultural and Horticultural Sciences (ADTI)), as well as co-author of the study and head of the research group ‘Molecular Fish Physiology at the IGB’, Dr David Bierbach (ADTI and the ‘Science of Intelligence’ Excellence Cluster), Prof. em. Dr Werner Kloas (HU Biology, ADTI and IGB Berlin) and Paolo Gamberoni (ADTI).