As insect farming for food and animal feed scales rapidly, the welfare of the billions of insects farmed deserves growing ethical attention alongside commercial development.
Insect farming welfare occupies a genuinely uncertain space in animal ethics. The evidence for insect nociception is present but much weaker than for vertebrates, and whether insects have subjective pain experience remains scientifically contested. However, the scale of insect farming is so vast — trillions of individuals — that even a small probability of morally relevant experience represents an enormous aggregate welfare concern. The precautionary approach, favoring conditions and killing methods that minimize potential suffering even under uncertainty, is a reasonable and low-cost response to this uncertainty.