This year, the TCRS Shrimp Summit will be incorporated into the Global Seafood Alliance ’s Responsible Seafood Summit. Ahead of the event we’ll be spotlighting a different session each week. This week we’re focusing on Health Management in Shrimp Aquaculture.
Session 3
Disease remains the single biggest threat to profitability in shrimp farming. This session will test many of the assumptions that have guided disease management strategies for years, asking questions such as:
Does exclusion-based biosecurity actually breed more vulnerable shrimp? Comparing the Asian model of building SPF status from disease-tolerant stock against Latin America’s non-SPF intensification methods.
Do disease outbreaks owe more to human factors than pathogens? Decisions related to things like site selection, facility design, and water reuse may compound disease risk long before a pathogen ever shows up.
Rethinking biosecurity in light of new research
The session will also consider whether broodstock can be engineered to produce hardier postlarvae before disease enters the picture, and if it’s possible that animal welfare, long viewed as purely an ethical matter, is also a useful productivity metric.
Included in the session will be a look at some of the tools reshaping the front lines of disease management, such as field-deployable diagnostics, bacteriophage therapy, and microbiome profiling. Is a commercial viral vaccine next?
And no discussion of research with commercial implications would be complete without consideration of the regulatory landscape—specifically, the policy bottlenecks that farmers can’t engineer their way around. Determining where the individual farmer’s agency ends and collective biosecurity obligation begins is a critical question.
These issues and more will be on the menu in the Health Management in Shrimp Aquaculture session—an opportunity to rethink the assumptions that underlie the industry’s existing biosecurity protocols.
Shrimp Summit 2026 Agenda
Global Production and Markets: Experts share their perspectives on the state of the global shrimp industry today and how regulatory factors, shifting trade policies, and consumer preferences are expected to impact producers and buyers going forward.
Genetic Improvement in Farmed Shrimp: Genetic selection is a powerful tool driving the evolution of modern shrimp breeding programs. This session will explore the approaches used by leading organizations today and spotlight the new frontiers in genetic improvement.
Health Management in Shrimp Aquaculture: Major advances are transforming how the shrimp industry approaches disease prevention and control. Learn how strategies have evolved from a focus on pathogens toward more comprehensive health management systems.
Digital Technology in Shrimp Farming: Digital technologies are transforming shrimp farming from a manual system informed largely by experience to one driven by real-time data. Discover the digital tools that are optimizing all aspects of shrimp production.
Engineered Pond Systems: The inexorable intensification of shrimp production has revealed the limitations of traditional ponds. This session will examine how Engineered Pond Systems are designed to accommodate that growth through deliberate engineering of the production environment rather than operational tweaks.
Improver Programs for Smallholder Shrimp Farms: Most shrimp comes from small farms. Improver programs aim to create a practical, cost-effective pathway that will promote responsible practices by smallholder farms through technical support, improved data collection, affordable assessment models, and stronger market incentives.
Shrimp Welfare: This session will investigate the principal welfare concerns in shrimp farming, which include humane slaughter at harvest, eliminating the need for eyestalk ablation in broodstock, and maintaining good welfare throughout grow-out.
