The human consumption of insects is growing rapidly as a sustainable protein source, but the welfare status of the billions of insects farmed for food deserves serious consideration under genuine scientific uncertainty about their sentience.
The human food insect sector faces the same fundamental welfare uncertainty as the animal feed insect sector, but with the additional dimension of being a direct consumer choice. If insects are sentient — if they have some form of subjective experience of pain and distress — then the farming and killing of billions for human consumption raises moral questions that are not resolved by noting insects are small or phylogenetically distant from vertebrates. The precautionary principle argues for taking this uncertainty seriously: developing and adopting killing methods that minimise potential suffering (such as rapid chilling) rather than assuming non-sentience. Consumer engagement with this question is at an early stage but is consistent with the broader trajectory of expanding moral circles to include less familiar organisms.