Crickets are increasingly farmed for human food and animal feed as sustainable protein, with welfare considerations centred on housing conditions, thermal management, and humane killing.
Cricket welfare involves both individual and population-level considerations. Individual welfare concerns centre on thermal management - crickets in suboptimal temperatures experience chronic metabolic stress - and killing method, where rapid chilling and freezing is preferred to slow desiccation. Population welfare involves disease management, as cricket farms are vulnerable to density-dependent disease outbreaks including densovirus that can devastate entire colonies. The welfare status of individual crickets is genuinely uncertain; while they show nociceptive responses, the degree of subjective suffering they experience remains debated. The precautionary principle supports implementing minimum standards even while research continues.