U.K.-based supermarket chain Waitrose & Partners has committed to adopt more humane prawn harvesting methods by the end of 2026.
The company currently uses the controversial ice-slurry method, which leaves the animals to suffocate while conscious in a process that, according to activists, can sometimes take up to three hours. Electrical stunning is considered a more humane harvesting method, since it quickly renders prawns unconscious before slaughter.
International Council for Animal Welfare (ICAW) representative Justine Audemard commended the decision, saying that “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 and suffocated prawns from their shelves,” she continued.
The U.K. government established a sentience standard for prawns and other decapod crustaceans in 2021, after studies showed that the animals were capable of feeling pain and distress. According to ICAW, however, “in commercial farming these animals are still treated as if they are vegetables, with no regard to their needs.”
In December 2024 Waitrose was among the retailers which Hagerstown, Maryland, U.S.A.-based nonprofit Mercy for Animals targeted in their campaign to pressure U.K. retailers to stop sourcing shrimp and prawns from farms that engage in eyestalk ablation and ice-slurry slaughter.
At the time of that campaign Waitrose told SeafoodSource that it had already ended eyestalk ablation in 2023 and said that it was currently trialing the feasibility of electrical stunning on its supplying farms. It has now announced that the trials were a success, and that it will, according to the company’s website “improve the process and roll [it] out to our entire warm water prawn supply chain by the end of 2026.”
Other U.K. retailers, including Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Marks & Spencer, and Ocada have publicly committed to phasing out eyestalk ablation and introducing electrical stunning.
Eyestalk ablation and ice-slurry slaughter were controversial, especially in Europe, even before the U.K. government legally recognized crutascean sentinence in 2021. More recent research has suggested that eyestalk ablation – where farmers remove the eyestalks of female shrimp to boost production – is not only potentially inhumane, but may add to costs. University of Stirling postdoctoral researcher Simão Zacaria won the 2020 Global Aquaculture Innovation Award for demonstrating that alternatives to the practice could be cost neutral or even cost saving for shrimp farms.
