Billions of crop pest insects are killed annually through pesticide applications, with integrated pest management approaches reducing both ecological damage and potential insect suffering.
The welfare significance of crop pest insects depends on contested questions about insect sentience. If insects can suffer, pesticide applications that kill billions of crop pests and non-target insects cause welfare harm at enormous scale. Even accepting the precautionary principle at modest weight, reducing pesticide use has welfare significance. Integrated pest management reduces pesticide reliance through targeted monitoring, threshold-based intervention, biological control, and habitat management. Biological control using natural enemies including parasitic wasps and ladybirds reduces pest populations through methods that, if not welfare-neutral, cause less suffering than broad-spectrum chemical applications. Sterile insect technique releases sterile males to reduce breeding population and has been successfully applied in screwworm and tsetse fly control.