Insect farming might cause more suffering than other animal farming
The edible insect market has been growing and is projected to continue increasing rapidly in the future. There has been significant research pointing to the fact that insects show signs of consciousness , and I think it’s important to seriously compare insect welfare interventions with other ones. Brian Tomasik's “How Much Direct Suffering Is Caused by Various Animal Foods?” compares the days of suffering per kilogram of different animals. I’d like to add on to this post by a guesstimate model of where insect suffering may lie in this list. I used cricket suffering to create this model and it’s important to note there are differences in the numbers depending on which insects are being farmed—mealworms and black soldier flies likely have a different weight and sentience multiplier . https://www.getguesstimate.com/models/21398 My reasoning for the numbers I used is given in the sheet: if you hover over the fields, you will see a detailed description. The model shows the m