Insect farming for food and animal feed is growing rapidly, and welfare standards for farmed insects are being developed despite ongoing uncertainty about insect sentience.
Insect farming welfare sits at a scientific frontier where the evidence base is insufficient to make confident welfare claims but where the precautionary principle suggests some attention to insect welfare is warranted. If insects are sentient, the scale of suffering in commercial insect farming at extreme densities would be enormous. Conversely, if insects are not sentient, welfare standards for farmed insects are unnecessary. The appropriate response to this uncertainty is investment in insect sentience research and development of provisional welfare guidance that can be refined as evidence develops. The rapid scaling of the insect farming industry makes establishing this framework urgently important.