More people are eating bugs

 – but is it ethical to farm

 insects for food?

insect farmers

1. Matan Shelomi

   Associate Professor of Entomology, National Taiwan University

insect farmers

What is the life of a cricket worth?

Insect farming is a rapidly growing industry,

 with hundreds of companies worldwide

rearing insects at industrial scales. The global

 value of insect farming is expected to surpass

  US$1.18 billion by 2023.

Farmed insects, or “mini-livestock,” refers to

 insects such as crickets and mealworms

raised for the sole purpose of being sold as

 food or animal feed.

These are not the fried tarantulas on a stick

 hawked to tourists or scorpion lollipops sold

 as novelties. High-protein insect powder can

 be used in foods from breads to buns, pasta

and protein bars. Such products are already

 available in countries including the U.S.,

  Switzerland and Finland.

promotion of edible insects in new markets, I

 have seen how much progress has been

 made in the past decade in normalizing the

 idea of eating insects worldwide. Now is the

 time to evaluate the ethical aspects of insect

 farming.

Insects for humanity

The main motivation for edible insects’ rising

 popularity is environmental. Producing 1

 kilogram (2.2 pounds) of insect protein

 requires about 10% of the feed, water and

 land used for the same amount of beef

 production, and releases as little as 1% of the

  greenhouse gases. Insects have a lower

 environmental impact even compared to other

 meat alternatives like dairy, gluten and

 mycoprotein.

Raising insects on waste products significantly

 ups these benefits. Black soldier flies can be

 raised on agriculture byproducts like

 vegetable peels or spent grains. The larvae

 are then used as feed for fish and poultry,

  recycling waste and reducing reliance on

 more expensive soymeal and fishmeal feeds.

 insect farmers .

Besides being big business, insect farms also

 provide important sources of protein and

 income for rural households. They can be

 established cheaply, with little space, and are

 a boon for smallholder farmers who lack the

 resources for livestock, all the while

 sustainably providing feed and fertilizer.

A good example is the “Insects for Peace”

 program that has helped ex-combatants in

 post-conflict Colombia with their reintegration.

 The former soldiers have found livelihood

 farming black soldier flies, which are used as

 a feed component for livestock.

Is insect meat cruelty-free?

An additional bonus is that insects do not

 evoke much empathy. With exceptions, even

 vegetarians rarely think twice about swatted

 mosquitoes, let alone the millions of

 agricultural pests killed when farming crops.

Those who do mind can rest assured that

 farmed insects lead net-positive lives, with no

 fear of predators or starvation. Insect welfare

 is conveniently easy: While cramped, hot,

 filthy settings in factory farms are cruel for

 vertebrates, they are ideal for insects like

 mealworms that thrive when crowded

 together. One can imagine that there are not

 many requirements to set up a humane

  cockroach farm, though one’s neighbors

 might disapprove.

Scholars and advocates believe that the mass

 slaughter of insects should be done in the

 most humane way.

Remy Gabalda/AFP via Getty Images

The slaughter of insects is another issue.

Recent surveys of U.K. insect farmers found

 many are concerned about insect pain

 perception and providing their mini-livestock a

 “good death.” The most common slaughter

 methods large-scale insect farmers use are

  freezing or freeze-drying, with the

 assumption that the cold-blooded insects will

 humanely fall asleep and never wake up.

While insects can and do sense physical pain,

 they likely do not do so consciously.

 Invertebrate neurologist Shelley Adamo notes

 that many insect behaviors are “incongruent”

 with pain as mammals experience it, citing

 reports of insects walking normally on broken

 legs or mantids mating while their partner

 eats them alive. Entomologist Craig H

 Eisemann’s influential review of the field, “Do

 Insects Feel Pain?,” concluded that they are

 missing too many neurological, chemical and

 behavioral signs for a pain state.

Nonetheless, scholars such as Eisemann and

 other advocates agree that insects should be

 farmed and killed with the assumption that

 they do feel pain. That means the slaughter

 method should be as quick and painless as

 possible.

While certainly less potentially painful than

  boiling, as extreme heat is known to induce

  pain responses in insects, freezing is slow.

 Shredding is a popular alternative: At their

 small size, insects can be reduced to powder

 almost instantaneously, before they could

 sense any pain. Current surveys suggest

  public perception of pulverization is still

 negative compared with freezing, but insect

 farmers increasingly view it as the more

  humane choice.

The low probability that farmed insects suffer

 pain, if they can “suffer” at all, combined with

 the environmental and social benefits of

 insect farming, caused philosopher Chris

 Meyers to argue that eating insects is not only

 morally acceptable but also morally good.

This idea gave rise to the term “entovegan.”

 Like pescatarians follow a vegetarian diet but

 still eat seafood, entovegans happily eat

 arthropods, secure in the knowledge that

 their diet is both sustainable and ethical.

How much are insect lives worth?

What gives some strict vegans pause is the

 sheer number of insects involved.

In a 2020 preprint, animal welfare activist

  Abraham Rowe calculates that 1 trillion to 1.2

 trillion individual insects are farmed annually

 for food and feed, not including harvested

 wild insects. On average, 79 billion to 94

 billion farmed insects are alive on farms

 globally in any given day, compared with only

 about 22 billion chickens, Earth’s most

 popular meat.

So, how valuable is an insect’s life compared

 with a plant’s or a bacterium’s? Capacity for

 consciousness is a popular metric for

 determining if an organism has moral

 standing, even though there is no agreement

on how to actually measure that.

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If one assumes, hypothetically, that insects are

 0.1% as sentient as cows, or that the

 probability that insects can suffer is 0.1%,

 then killing 1,000 crickets has a similar ethical

 footprint as killing one cow. That may seem

 generous, yet in his guide “How to Reply to

 Some Ethical Objections to Entomophagy,”

 philosopher Bob Fisher calculates that one

 cow produces as much meat as 900,000

 crickets.

The math changes, however, when one

 considers how many animals die in

 agricultural fields: Conservative estimates

 place at least 10 million invertebrates per acre

 of crops at risk from pesticides, as well as

 thousands of small, undeniably conscious

 vertebrates like mice and rabbits at risk from

 mechanical harvesters. This math adds

 millions of deaths not only to traditional meat

 production through the fields of feed, but also

 to almost any cultivated crops, including soy.

 To quote biologists Charles Nicoll and Sharon

 Russell, “There is no such thing as a bloodless

 veggieburger.”

Fisher calculated that the number of insects

 killed to produce a plant-based diet or an

 insect-based diet are about the same,

 meaning entoveganism and veganism are in

 that sense equivalent. Eating insects raised on

 organic wastes, all but eliminating the

 environmental and animal death costs of

 plant farming, may be the best option of

 them all.

The rise in insect farming means questions

 about insect sentience and slaughter are no

 longer just philosophical: The well-being of

 trillions of creatures is at stake.

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