As insect farming scales globally to provide protein for food and animal feed, important welfare questions arise about the sentience and treatment of farmed insects.
Insect welfare is an emerging area with genuine scientific uncertainty about the capacity of insects to experience suffering. Current evidence suggests that insects have nociceptors and show protective responses to injury, but the degree to which these constitute subjective pain experience remains unclear. The precautionary principle suggests that welfare measures including rapid chilling before killing should be standard practice given the enormous scale of insect farming and the low cost of potential welfare improvements. Research into insect sentience should be prioritised.