As insect farming scales up to provide sustainable protein, welfare questions about the experiences of billions of individual insects become increasingly important.
Insect farming for food and feed involves billions of individual animals whose capacity for suffering is genuinely uncertain but non-negligible. The evidence for nociception in insects - the capacity to detect and respond to harmful stimuli - is reasonably strong, though whether this involves subjective suffering is unknown. The precautionary principle suggests that this uncertainty warrants some welfare consideration, particularly given the enormous scale of insect farming. Investing in research into insect welfare indicators, optimal housing conditions, and humane slaughter methods is both scientifically appropriate and ethically prudent given the scale of the industry.