Agricultural pesticides kill and harm invertebrates at enormous scale, affecting pollinators, soil fauna and aquatic invertebrates. Reducing pesticide use through integrated pest management protects invertebrate welfare.
Pesticide impacts on invertebrate welfare operate at enormous scale but remain largely invisible because they affect small animals that are individually unrecognisable and collectively uncounted. A field of neonicotinoid-treated oilseed rape doesn't display its dead and dying bees; the aquatic invertebrate community downstream of a pyrethroid runoff event is unseen. The welfare case for pesticide reduction depends partly on accepting invertebrate welfare significance - and the precautionary principle suggests that if there is meaningful probability that invertebrates experience something morally relevant, the scale of pesticide-caused harm is among the most significant unaddressed welfare issues.