Desert locust swarms are controlled with pesticides that also kill non-target insects, and the welfare of billions of individual locusts merits consideration.
The welfare of locusts individually may seem trivial, but the capacity for suffering in insects is receiving increasing scientific attention. Pesticide death is not instantaneous and may involve significant distress. At the scale of locust swarms, even a small probability of suffering matters at the aggregate level. Developing more targeted biological control methods serves both agricultural and precautionary welfare goals.