Cricket farming for protein is expanding rapidly, but the welfare implications of industrially farming billions of insects remain poorly understood.
Cricket farming sits at a welfare frontier: insects may have morally relevant experiences, but the science remains genuinely uncertain. What is clear is that industrial cricket production involves billions of animals whose potential suffering has received almost no formal attention. Given this uncertainty, applying a precautionary welfare approach — minimizing density stress and developing humane killing methods — is prudent. The rapid growth of insect farming makes developing welfare standards now, before the industry fully scales, critically important.