The evolving science and ethics of welfare in commercial insect farming for food and feed.
Insect farming welfare sits at the frontier of animal welfare science, requiring ethical decisions under genuine uncertainty about the extent of insect sentience and suffering. The precautionary principle suggests that where there is reasonable evidence of nociception and stress responses, production practices should minimize potential suffering. The scale of insect farming - involving vastly more individual animals than conventional livestock - means that small per-animal welfare improvements translate to enormous aggregate benefits if insects are sentient. Standards are emerging but voluntary, and implementation across the global industry is inconsistent.