Document type: article published in Ambrook Research
Author: Moira O'Donovan
Preview:Insects are excluded from welfare protections, but with a rapid expansion in the number of insects being farmed, scientists and producers say that may need to change.
Consider an insect; maybe there's one buzzing around your head right now. It's likely that few people would dwell deeply on the ethical implications of swatting that fly. Even concerns about practices that deliberately harm insects, like pesticide use, are rarely couched in welfare terms. But as insects come to occupy a new position - largely as farm animals for livestock feed - welfare questions are coming to the fore. Worldwide, roughly 1.2 trillion insects are already raised annually, a number that is expected to increase by orders of magnitude as more insects are farmed for pet food, livestock feed, and human consumption (compare that to the approximately 1.55 billion cattle worldwide, in 2022). With that expansion imminent, researchers and farmers are attempting to answer an existential question: Do we need to care about insect welfare - and what, exactly, does welfare look like for a bug? As it stands, there are no welfare protections for insects. "Insects just aren't animals, from the perspective of policy," said Bob Fischer, professor of philosophy at Texas University and president of the Anthropoda Foundation, which was established this year to support funding for insect welfare research. "It's really the Wild West when it comes to these agricultural practices." The U.S. Animal Welfare Act doesn't include invertebrates, for example, nor does its counterpart in the UK. Fischer said some producers are doing their best, but in the absence of regulations there's nothing to stop producers from focusing on maximizing production - which may not always align with welfare considerations. One of the companies attempting to do its best is Entosystem - a black soldier fly farm located in the Canadian province of Quebec. Entosystem, which raises flies for use in animal feed and fertilizer, stands to become the largest black soldier fly facility in North America when it reaches full capacity (currently it's operating at around 40 percent). Chief science officer Christopher Warburton said that when he started working in insect farming eight years ago, welfare wasn't considered an issue. At first, Warburton said he felt irked by those focused on it, given the harm done to insects by conventional agriculture through the use of insecticides. But given that he'd gotten into insect farming to do good for the planet, "You do have to start thinking about: Are you harming them?" Entosystem takes this into account by killing larvae and adults in what they believe to be the most humane ways - high heat for larvae, extreme cold for adults - and mimicking natural living conditions for different life stages. Yet there are still many unknowns, said Warburton.
Insects just aren't animals, from the perspective of policy. (...)
At the end of the day, we are raising insects and we are killing them, and so you have to be careful of not having an impact on your business either. (...)
It's hard to see why we would be particularly anxious about regulation for some new species. (...)
