Cricket farming for human food and animal feed is expanding rapidly as a sustainable protein source, but welfare questions about the capacity of insects to suffer remain unresolved and largely unaddressed in current farming standards.
Cricket farming welfare hinges on unresolved questions about insect sentience. Evidence supports nociception in insects including avoidance learning and grooming of injured sites. Whether this constitutes subjective suffering relevant to welfare is debated, but the precautionary principle and scale of production (potentially trillions of animals) makes this a high-priority welfare question. Freezing slaughter is currently considered the most humane method as insects are cold-blooded, but research on insect killing methods is in its infancy. Farming conditions, including crowding and substrate quality, may affect insect behaviour in ways that suggest welfare relevance.