Female shrimp broodstock once widely had their eyestalks ablated in a bid to increase their rates of reproduction, but the industry has faced growing criticism for the practice
The move follows negotiations with the International Council for Animal Welfare (ICAW) and a public debate around controversial prawn farming practices.
“This is an important commitment that could set new standards in the industry,” stated Jonas Becker, head of invertebrate welfare policy at ICAW, in a press release.
“These prawns will no longer have their eyes cut off, and instead of slowly suffocating to death, the electrical stunning will render them unconscious before slaughter,” he added.
Co-op sells around 23 million prawns per year according to ICAW’s estimation. Banning these practices means sparing the average animal three hours of strong pain, according to a scientific estimation using the Welfare Footprint methodology (McKay & McAuliffe, 2024). British customers agree that prawns deserve to be spared unnecessary suffering and that the common slaughter method of suffocation in ice sludge is “a big problem”, according to a survey carried out in 2023.
The retail chain has been working for several years to eliminate eyestalk ablation from its prawn supply chain, increasing the fraction of prawns from non-ablated females from 71 percent in 2022, to over 82 percent in 2023, and now 100 percent.
Waitrose, which recently committed to phase out the practice, has been working with Stirling University and the Seajoy Group. They demonstrated that the widely spread practice of cutting female broodstocks' eyes off to enhance egg production was unnecessary and counterproductive.
Other UK retailers Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Marks & Spencer, Ocado have already publicly committed to both phase out eyestalk ablation and introduce electrical stunning.
“Some supermarkets are banning ablated and suffocated prawns from their shelves. Unfortunately, other retailers such as Iceland and Morrison’s have stayed silent – which raises the question of how serious they take their commitment to animal welfare,” states Justine Audemard, head of negotiations at the International Council for Animal Welfare.
