Insects represent the vast majority of animal species and individuals on Earth; their potential for suffering deserves serious consideration.
Insect welfare sits at the outer boundary of moral consideration with significant uncertainty. Evidence for conscious suffering in most insect species is weak but not absent. The extraordinary scale of insect lives — trillions of individuals — means that even small probabilities of suffering aggregate to enormous moral significance. Insect farming methods including heat killing and grinding deserve scrutiny under the precautionary principle.