Invertebrate Welfare — March 2020

Social Distancing

Bees also practice social distancing — they physically remove some sick bees from the hive. Beekeepers have actually bred for this trait to create more “hygenic” colonies of bees. I'm glad that humans are instead at least attempting to stick together (though six feet apart) through this pandemic, and I hope you're staying safe through these strange and sad times.

Project Updates

I (Abraham Rowe), just completed a survey of insect farms in the US and Canada. I’m looking at farms that raise insects for direct human, pet, and livestock consumption.

Some highlights from the data I’ve found so far:
 

Conceptualizing insect farming

Insect farming for direct consumption is not a new activity in the US and Canada, despite media hype in the last few decades. Mealworms, sold live and dead, have been farmed as a food additive for livestock for decades, and crickets, sold live and dead, have been farmed for reptile food for almost as long.

Among the major insect farming companies and industry groups, these industries are frequently differentiated from the recent insect farming startups. Live cricket farming in the US and Canada is dominated by a few larger, older companies, for example, and my impression is that newer companies weren’t trying to compete with them, but have started to pivot into the space upon realizing that demand for insect protein for human consumption is low.

Some newer companies are now producing crickets, black soldier flies, and mealworms for new agriculture applications. These companies see themselves as distinct from older mealworm producers, though their practices overlap.

In general, my impression is that there are basically three to five markets that insects are raised for: human consumption, pet consumption (slaughtered or live), and livestock (slaughtered or live). Within these categories, the primary differences (within a given species) in rearing practices are diet — insects raised for human consumption are frequently fed higher quality foods, or foods that humans might perceive as being healthier, such as organic produce.

Most common slaughter methods

• I believe the majority of crickets slaughtered for food in the US are still shipped live, and killed by predators (i.e. pets). Despite the media attention on cricket protein for human consumption, pet reptiles seem to still dominate the market for cricket protein.

• The largest category of insect farming in the US and Canada is mealworm farming. Mealworms are primarily raised to supplement the diets of livestock, and seem to typically be killed via freezing.

• Crickets slaughtered for human, livestock, and pet consumption are also most frequently killed via freezing.

How insect farmers are thinking about welfare

In interviews I’ve done, it seems clear that insect farmers aren’t really thinking about welfare. But, when asked about it directly about it, almost everyone I spoke to pointed to common causes of death on insect farms that occur prior to slaughter. The most common issues:

• Water-related deaths

  • Drowning

  • Consuming frass contaminated / poisoned water

  • Lack of water

  • Non-purified water leading to death from dissolved organic chemicals

• Cannibalism

  • Insects like to eat chitin/exoskeleton. If enough isn’t mixed with food, insects, especially crickets, might eat each other

  • If crickets are not farmed, and kept together, they eventually will consume each other, so cricket farming harvest timing is to some extent is centered around growing them as large as possible prior to this occurring

• Moldy food / Soggy food

  • Caused by bad food management / infrequent changing of food

• Composition of diet

  • Most crickets eat a diet of chicken feed mixed with vegetables. If this mix doesn’t meet nutritional requirements, crickets will often die

• Pests

  • Most common pests seem to be fruit flies and spider mites

  • Other pests can harbor viruses, etc., which can kill an entire generation of farmed insects

A lot of insect farmers, especially new ones, have no prior experience, and fairly preventable issues (keeping water / food clean), are repeated due to this.

On a given farm, somewhere between 75% and 95% of crickets raised survive to slaughter each year, and around 70% of mealworms survive to slaughter.

Is insect welfare obvious?

A common view among cricket farmers when discussing welfare is that it is obvious to them when cricket welfare is high on their farms. Basically, there is a somewhat widespread belief that if crickets are doing well, they survive, and if they are doing poorly, they die. One reason for this is besides occasional drownings, etc., crickets will often die en mass, and not individually.

It isn’t obvious to me that it is the case that this means crickets either have good lives or die. It could be that we aren’t particularly good at measuring welfare, or that within the confines of cricket farms, the harms to crickets tend to kill them. It also seems possible that humans are just bad at casually assessing insect welfare, so farmers are missing important aspects of cricket life.

However, if this claim is true, it might be good news for insect welfare advocates — addressing early mortality might take care of many welfare concerns on farms.

Invertebrate Industry News

Insects as livestock feed

• The most concerning trend in insect farming remains the growth of insects raised for livestock feed.

  • Reinartz, a large German oil and seed processor, announced that it was going to invest heavily in insect protein for livestock over the next ten years

  • Auchan Retail France introduced an insect-fed trout last year, replacing 50% of fishmeal fed to the trout with insect meal. This action saved up to 11 tonnes of bait fish on their farms

  • Thai Union, a large Thai seafood producer, is investing $30 million in alternative feed proteins to replace bait fish, and expects a large part of this to be produced from insects

  • Ÿnsect, a large French insect farming company, received a write up in the Financial Times. The company is explicitly focusing on industry applications of insect farming, especially as an alternative to bait fish

Bees as pest control

• A government agency in India is introducing bees into forest boundaries to try to dissuade elephants from walking into human habitation

Superworms can eat Styrofoam

• Researchers found a way to use superworms to biodegrade polystyrene, a plastic used to produce Styrofoam. Superworms are one of the most commonly farmed insects globally. They are the larvae of a species of darkling beetle

Invertebrate Sentience News

Bee Sentience

• Pesticides have been found to impair bumble bee learning and brain development

• A study was published on the role of evolution in the development of honeybee waggle dance dialects

• A study found some similarities between bee and human brains. Specifically, some brain waves in bee brains have similar properties as human brains. The study’s authors postulated that studying these features of bee brains might lead to a cheaper way to study human brains.

Other

• UMD’s student newspaper published an opinion supporting insect rights

• A researcher is trying to build a massive bug biodome in Oklahoma City.