Insect farming is growing rapidly as a sustainable protein source, but the welfare of farmed insects raises important ethical questions given emerging evidence of insect sentience and pain perception.
Insect welfare sits at the frontier of animal ethics: the evidence for insect sentience is incomplete but not dismissible, and the scale of insect farming is enormous. If even a small proportion of the trillion-plus insects farmed annually experience something like pain, the aggregate welfare stakes are significant. The precautionary approach — taking insect welfare seriously proportional to the probability of sentience rather than waiting for certainty — is increasingly advocated by philosophers and some welfare scientists. Rapid-kill methods (freeze-killing, grinding) are likely to cause less suffering than slow methods (water immersion at low heat) if insects can suffer. Investing in research and adopting precautionary practices costs little while potentially preventing enormous suffering.