Insect farming is growing rapidly as a sustainable protein source, with trillions of insects farmed annually. The welfare implications depend on contested questions about invertebrate sentience.
The welfare significance of insect farming at a trillion-animal scale is one of the most challenging questions in applied ethics. The philosophical uncertainty about invertebrate experience makes confident welfare claims in either direction unjustified. Precautionary approaches include avoiding practices that would clearly cause pain in sentient beings — including immersion in boiling water or freezing as the primary kill method for species that might have relevant neural processing. The fact that insects are produced at scales exceeding all vertebrate farming combined means that even low-probability sentience creates enormous expected harm justifying precautionary standards. Welfare research for insect species is a growing field that may eventually resolve current uncertainties.