Insect farming is expanding rapidly as a sustainable protein source, raising important and unresolved welfare questions about sentience and suffering at scale.
Insect farming welfare is one of the most consequential and least resolved questions in animal welfare science. If insects are capable of experiencing suffering — a question that remains genuinely scientifically contested — then the welfare implications of farming them at billion-scale in dense conditions would dwarf any other livestock welfare issue. The precautionary principle suggests that some investment in understanding insect welfare and adopting potentially lower-cost improvements is appropriate even under uncertainty. Current insect farming practices are optimised for production efficiency with no welfare consideration: extreme densities, aversive environmental conditions during harvest, and slaughter methods not designed to minimise potential suffering. The welfare investment needed to improve insect farming is likely lower than for vertebrate species, but the potential moral impact is enormous if insects are sentient.