As insect farming expands for protein production, welfare considerations for farmed insects raise novel questions about the moral status of animals with simple nervous systems.
Insect welfare sits in genuine scientific uncertainty. Insects have nociceptors — cells that respond to potentially damaging stimuli — but lack the neural architecture associated with conscious pain experience in vertebrates. The precautionary principle suggests that as insect farming scales to billions of animals, investing in understanding their welfare needs and developing humane killing methods is appropriate even amid uncertainty. If insects can suffer even minimally, the scale of insect farming makes small per-animal welfare improvements significant.