Insect farming is growing rapidly as a sustainable protein source, but the welfare of the billions of insects farmed annually is only beginning to receive scientific and regulatory attention.
Insect welfare occupies a genuinely uncertain moral space. The evidence for insect nociception - the ability to detect harmful stimuli - is clearer than the evidence for conscious pain experience. Insects have relatively simple nervous systems and lack the neural structures associated with consciousness in vertebrates, but absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. The precautionary principle suggests that as insect farming scales to trillions of individuals, investing in understanding and improving welfare is prudent. Areas of particular uncertainty include whether high stocking densities cause distress, whether rapid temperature killing is humane, and whether substrate access affects behavioral wellbeing.