Shrimp welfare and cultivated meat
Andrés Jiménez Zorrilla is cofounder and board chair of Shrimp Welfare Project, a comparatively new organization dedicated to reducing the suffering of members of their namesake species. I recently had the opportunity to interview Zorrilla about a variety of topics, including how he came to launch the charity, why he doesn’t focus on farmed insects, and whether cellular agriculture could help save shrimp.
JON HOCHSCHARTNER: How did you come to do the work you do?
ANDRÉS JIMÉNEZ ZORRILLA: I worked for over 15 years in investment banking and private equity, working for Morgan Stanley and Aermont Capital. I also started my own real estate investment business in 2018, and was responsible for more than €2 billion of investments in Spain and Portugal.
After that chapter of my career, I wanted to transition to something more impactful. I was inspired by my wife, who is a social worker and has always been sort of the force for good in our family. So, I started learning more about effective advocacy and ended up starting Shrimp Welfare Project in 2021 with my co-founder Aaron Boddy.
JH: Can you briefly lay out the case for shrimp sentience?
AJZ: Shortly after we founded Shrimp Welfare Project, the U.K. government commissioned a report from the London School of Economics to look at the evidence of cephalopods (octopuses and squid) and decapods (crabs, lobsters, and shrimps). There’s no single way to determine sentience, even among humans, so the researchers developed eight criteria – things like whether these animals have the right body parts to feel pain, or the right neural architecture to feel pain and integrate it, and whether they show behavioral responses to noxious stimuli.
And when the scientists looked at the decapod family as a whole, there was very strong evidence that these animals either strongly or very strongly fulfill all eight categories. So, the recommendation from the London School of Economics was to unequivocally include shrimps and other decapods as animals recognized as sentient in the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act of 2022.
Other researchers have also published findings that point toward shrimp sentience. Bob Fischer and his team at Rethink Priorities looked at hundreds of different behaviors that would indicate sentience. Their in-depth analysis of existing evidence showed that shrimps can show anxiety-like states: they tend to their wounds, and their behavior is different when you apply anesthetics or analgesics, indicating that it’s not a reflex. There are a number of behaviors that, all put together, strongly indicate that shrimps can feel pain and distress.
JH: Why should animal activists be focusing more on the suffering of shrimp, instead of, say, chickens?
AJZ: My co-founder and I launched Shrimp Welfare Project after learning about the staggering number of shrimps that are farmed each year – about half a trillion – and the fact that shrimp welfare was a completely neglected issue. We were the first organization to focus exclusively on the welfare of farmed shrimps.
In the animal advocacy space, very few organizations prioritize aquatic animals, despite the fact that they are farmed and slaughtered at significantly greater rates than land animals. The total number of all land animals farmed each year is a combined 80-90 billion – that kind of a figure is already difficult for our brains to truly comprehend. But for two species of shrimp alone, it’s approximately 500 billion, which is completely mind-boggling. The majority (51%) of animals alive on farms at any moment are shrimps.
And once we started to think about all of these shrimps as individuals, and recognizing that very few advocates were prioritizing them, it became clear that this is an area of high-impact. Finally, there are a number of animal welfare organisations doing fantastic work to improve the lives of other farmed animals, while there were none to help shrimp.
JH: Why does your organization prioritize shrimp suffering, as opposed to farmed insect suffering?
AJZ: We founded Shrimp Welfare Project in 2021 through the Charity Entrepreneurship Incubation Program. During that experience, I explored many different ideas for impactful charities – everything from global health interventions to animal welfare innovations. At the time, Charity Entrepreneurship had drafted a report on shrimp welfare, and when I first saw it, I thought, “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
I had cared deeply about animals for a very long time, but shrimps had never crossed my mind. But when I read about the numbers and the evidence of sentience, it was like lifting the veil, and I couldn’t go back. My co-founder and I both felt like this was an important issue where we could have tremendous impact.
Of course, there are many issues where other organizations can be effective for animals. Rethink Priorities recently released a report showing that insect farming could grow by nearly 1,000% by 2033, which is staggering. That report also showed that shrimp farming is expected to grow by 73% during the same time, compared to finfishes at 16% and broiler chickens at 14%.
JH: Why does your organization focus on welfare reforms for shrimp, instead of the development of cultivated shrimp?
AJZ: Ever since we learned about the scope and scale of the suffering of farmed shrimps, we’ve always looked at various ways to help improve the situation. At Shrimp Welfare Project, we conduct research and support other research projects so we can have an evidence-based approach to our work.
In 2023, we authored a research report on The Alternative Shrimp Market, examining investment in the global alternative seafood market and potential long-term trends. Ultimately, the market might shift and there could be less demand for farmed shrimps in the future, and Shrimp Welfare Project could play a role in facilitating coordination between important market players such as farming communities who could produce key ingredients, seafood companies, researchers, and governments.
For the foreseeable future, there will be billions of shrimps who will be harvested on farms, and Shrimp Welfare Project is focused on how we can help them experience minimal stress and pain during the process.
JH: I know some companies are developing cultivated shrimp meat. Do you think more private and public organizations in the cellular-agriculture space should focus their resources there?
AJZ: Consumers are increasing their consumption of alternative seafood for several reasons: aquatic animal welfare, environment, health, and transparency. Seafood companies have an incentive to diversify their portfolio with a new revenue stream, and several major seafood producers have already partnered with alternative shrimp companies.
Shrimp Welfare Project has been able to engage in wonderfully positive collaborations with the shrimp industry, especially through our Humane Slaughter and Eyestalk Ablation-Free initiatives, and there are many other ways that different organizations could address similar issues.
JH: Are you aware of any unique barriers to cultivating shrimp products, that you wouldn’t face cultivating chicken meat?
AJZ: Our Alternative Shrimp Market report identified several barriers to large-scale consumer uptake of alternative shrimp, including high production costs, production formulation, consumer acceptance, and obtaining regulatory approvals. Possible solutions include open-access R&D, scaling up production of animal-free omega-3 fatty acids, and guaranteed offtake contracts (purchase commitments). Cultivated shrimp also has several potential advantages over other cultivated meats, such as its ability to be cultivated at lower temperatures.