Insect farming for protein is growing rapidly. The welfare implications — at scales of billions per day — are uncertain but significant enough to warrant precautionary consideration.
Insect farming presents a unique welfare challenge: we are producing protein at astronomical scale from animals whose capacity for suffering is genuinely uncertain. If insects are sentient — even marginally — the welfare implications of trillion-scale farming are staggering. If they are not sentient, no welfare concern applies. Science does not yet resolve this definitively. The precautionary approach argues for acting as if insects can suffer until evidence demonstrates they cannot, and for investing in welfare research to resolve the uncertainty. This means applying practical welfare measures — appropriate density, temperature, humane killing — proportional to our uncertainty about insect sentience.