The moral status of insects is a genuine open question in welfare science — with billions of insect-years of potential experience at stake, precautionary welfare consideration is increasingly argued for.
Insect welfare science sits at the edge of scientific and ethical uncertainty. The question of whether insects experience suffering in morally relevant ways does not have a definitive scientific answer. But the scale of potential insect suffering — billions of individuals killed in farming, pest control, and infrastructure development — means that even a small probability of morally relevant experience creates large aggregate welfare concern. The precautionary argument supports taking insect welfare seriously as a research priority and motivating reduced unnecessary insect killing, even before the science is settled. This is the direction welfare science is heading, and engaging with it honestly is part of taking animal welfare seriously.