January 12, 2026
FAI puts welfare front and centre of shrimp production
FAI has launched the Shrimp Hub, its online ‘go-to’ resource for all shrimp supply chain professionals looking to put shrimp welfare at the heart of their businesses and improve performance.
Sara Barrento
Head of e-Learning
Sara is a marine biologist from Portugal passionate about communication, training and making complex topics accessible to all audiences in the supply chain. She is FAI’s Head of Training managing FAI Academy and the training management system Wyllow. She also co-creates and delivers free online and blended training events available in many languages to aquaculture farmers globally.
Sara completed her PhD on the nutritional quality and physiological responses to transport and storage of live crustaceans traded in Portugal in 2010 at Porto University. Since then, she has worked as a post-doc in Portugal, Chile and the UK on international collaborative projects related to the live trade of farmed mussels, kelp farming and the welfare of fish and shrimp. She started lecturing at Swansea University in 2015, where she maintains an honorary role.
Sara lives in Wales where you’ll find her mountain biking wherever there are trails, surfing off the Gower or sweating at hot yoga.
Available through FAI’s global learning platform, FAI Academy, the Hub brings together FAI’s training courses, tools and expert knowledge in a mobile-friendly, multi-lingual format dedicated solely to shrimp. It also provides a vehicle for other specialist and technology suppliers, ensuring welfare is front and centre of the industry’s future development.
Recognising commitment to shrimp welfare
Witnessing an encouraging rise in awareness of shrimp welfare in an industry producing six million tonnes of farmed shrimp annually, FAI is unwavering in its pursuit of enhancing shrimp wellbeing, while also knowing better welfare supports economic success.
Welfare is no longer just an ethical consideration but a central pillar of modern production systems. Healthy shrimp grow faster, survive better and require less costly interventions, driving cost-effective productivity.
To continue driving this change, the Shrimp Hub enables companies to embrace a route to formal endorsement by expanding the approach from individual self-enrolment to training teams of company staff.
“More and more major aquaculture certification schemes are now including animal welfare standards, so the Shrimp Hub has an important role in helping shrimp-producing companies prepare for certification and recognition of their commitment to shrimp welfare. To facilitate this, FAI offers two welfare ‘badges’ through the Hub, each marking a new level of achievement and indicating verifiable progress in welfare.”
The ‘Shrimp Welfare-trained Badge’ is given on completion of FAI’s newly created Shrimp Welfare Trained: Foundation Course for shrimp producer companies, processors and retailers. A practical introduction to several aspects of shrimp welfare, it helps companies build essential knowledge and skills to begin measuring and improving their performance.
The second level ‘Welfare-assessed badge’ is available to companies with the ‘Welfare-trained Badge’ which also run weekly welfare assessments on at least 10% of ponds and collect reliable data for improved decision-making and transparency.
Shrimp Welfare Indicators course in Indonesian
FAI is also marking the Hub’s launch by introducing its popular Shrimp Welfare Indicators course in Indonesian, joining a portfolio of seven other languages.
Southeast Asia is a global leader in shrimp production and FAI believes it’s vital its courses and welfare assessment tools are accessible to producers across the region. The Indonesian course sits alongside those in Thai, Vietnamese and Chinese, while also offered in English, Spanish, Portuguese and Arabic.
The Foundation and Indicators Courses are self-paced and cover the major welfare indicators across nutrition, environment, health and behaviour, how they can be assessed and why they matter.
Ready to lead on shrimp welfare?
LATEST NEWS
Discover the Latest in Food & Agriculture: Innovations, Insights, and Impactful Stories
SHARE
Sara Barrento
Head of e-Learning
Sara is a marine biologist from Portugal passionate about communication, training and making complex topics accessible to all audiences in the supply chain. She is FAI’s Head of Training managing FAI Academy and the training management system Wyllow. She also co-creates and delivers free online and blended training events available in many languages to aquaculture farmers globally.
Sara completed her PhD on the nutritional quality and physiological responses to transport and storage of live crustaceans traded in Portugal in 2010 at Porto University. Since then, she has worked as a post-doc in Portugal, Chile and the UK on international collaborative projects related to the live trade of farmed mussels, kelp farming and the welfare of fish and shrimp. She started lecturing at Swansea University in 2015, where she maintains an honorary role.
Sara lives in Wales where you’ll find her mountain biking wherever there are trails, surfing off the Gower or sweating at hot yoga.