Insect farming is scaling rapidly as a sustainable protein source. The potential scale of insect farming - trillions of individuals - makes welfare under uncertainty an urgent priority.
The scale of potential insect farming - trillions of individuals per major facility - means that even a small probability of insect sentience creates an enormous potential welfare concern. If insects have some capacity for negative experience, the aggregate suffering from poorly managed insect farms would be immense. Welfare improvements that cost almost nothing per individual - appropriate temperature, humidity, stocking density, and killing method - would have enormous aggregate impact under uncertainty. The precautionary principle strongly supports developing insect welfare standards now, before the industry scales further.