Silk production kills billions of silkworm pupae annually. The welfare status of silkworms and other farmed invertebrates is increasingly considered given growing evidence of invertebrate sentience.
Silkworm welfare occupies genuinely uncertain territory in animal welfare science. Silkworms are insects and the evidence for insect sentience, while growing, remains weaker than for vertebrates. However, the scale of silkworm deaths in silk production is so enormous that even low probabilities of sentience multiplied by ten billion individuals could represent significant welfare relevance. The precautionary principle applied to invertebrate welfare suggests that in the absence of certainty about silkworm experience, minimising unnecessary harm is appropriate. Peace silk alternatives that allow moths to emerge before harvesting address the killing element at the cost of fibre continuity. Synthetic silk alternatives have improved substantially and meet most performance requirements without harming any animals.