Insect farming for food and feed is growing rapidly, raising welfare questions about whether insects experience suffering and what standards should apply to their production.
Insect farming welfare sits at the frontier of animal welfare science where genuine uncertainty about sentience meets production at enormous scale. Trillions of insects are farmed annually - a number that makes even small probabilities of suffering morally significant. The scientific evidence neither confirms nor definitively excludes insect pain experience: they respond to noxious stimuli, can show behavioral evidence of aversion, and have been shown to self-administer analgesics in some studies. The welfare-cautious approach applies basic standards - appropriate temperature, feed quality, and humane slaughter - while research continues to clarify insect sentience. The uncertainty itself is informative for how we should approach this rapidly growing industry.