Invertebrate Welfare — March 2021
This month, there was a significant increase in the number of publications on insect farming, from a study on UK consumers’ willingness to try and pay for eggs from layer hens raised on insects, to a Time Magazine article on the environmental effects of eating insects. I’ve noticed this trend in general over the last year — when I started this newsletter, there was a lot less coverage of these topics, but now I see dozens of articles every month. Moving forward, I will likely not include commentary on most of these, and instead will focus on higher quality content, giving a sense of the trends and directions in industries and covering major news. I will link to some highlights from other news in the space in a new miscellaneous links section at the end of the newsletter, but something being there most likely means I didn’t think it was particularly interesting or helpful for understanding the space.
Using up to 30% BSFL instead of fishmeal in sturgeon farming may now be profitable
A new study published in Animals reports that replacing up to 30% of fishmeal and fish oil (FMFO) with black soldier fly larvae in Siberian Sturgeon is more profitable than using fishmeal.
This trend was found despite BSFL costing more than FMFO, as the feed conversion ratio for BSFL fed to sturgeon is higher than for FMFO.
Profitability was maximized when between 10% and 15% of FMFO by weight was replaced with black soldier fly larvae.
A quick back-of-the-envelope estimate suggests that replacing 10%-15% of FMFO production with BSFL would result in 22x to 73x as many animals dying for the same output in production, potentially meaning the welfare consequences of this finding are significant.
As far as I am aware, this is the first time that it has been found to theoretically be more profitable to replace conventional animal feed with insect feed.
One issue is that they assumed a relatively low figure for the price of BSFL feed, 3 Euros per kilogram, while Rabobank estimates prices to currently be between 3.5 and 5.5 Euros per kilogram.
Rabobank does report that prices will reach 3 Euros per kilogram within a few years, and drop below it by 2030.
A non-public Rabobank report identifies price as the primary barrier to the adoption of insect-based FMFO alternatives in the near future and expects prices to be cut in half by 2030.
If better feed conversion ratios mean that insectmeal could be profitable for species beyond Siberian Sturgeons sooner than expected, price might not be a barrier for long. If this is the case, I’d expect production capacity to become the primary barrier to more widespread adoption, along with legal barriers.
Rabobank estimates that production of insects for aquafeed could reach as much as 500,000 tonnes by 2030, or around 50x as much as production today (for aquafeed specifically).
Note that Rabobank is a major investor in insect farming, so they may have other motivations behind these projections (or they may be investing due to their projections).
Overall, this study seems to be reason to become more confident that insectmeal will replace a significant portion of FMFO use in the next few decades.
The latest news on invertebrate sentience
Proceedings of the Royal Society - Biological Sciences published a study which found cuttlefish to delay gratification for a greater reward.
This has been reported as cuttlefish passing the marshmallow test, a controversial study done on human children, which found that children who chose to wait 15 minutes for two marshmallows instead of accepting one immediately performed better on a variety of measures of life outcome, such as SAT scores.
Revista de Biologia Tropical published an opinion that argues that current ethical frameworks for the use of animals in experimentation are not sufficient for protecting invertebrates, and proposes a new framework for the inclusion of invertebrates.
The authors note that the commonly used “three Rs” approach to animal testing (Refinement, Reduction, and Replacement) have not been adequately applied to invertebrates in labs.
The authors argue that to protect invertebrates used in experimentation, expanding the three Rs to five (adding Respect and Responsibility) might address many issues involving the use of invertebrates and other animals in experimental settings.
They also argue that broadly, most ethical frameworks currently in use for vertebrate animals in experiments can be applied to invertebrates, but that invertebrates need to be included in animal testing reporting procedures (for example, some invertebrate populations in labs are not reported, while vertebrate populations are).
I’m fairly uncertain of the value of these kinds of proposals — I am not sure that these frameworks are action-guiding enough to significantly reduce harms to animals, and it's unclear to me how widely adopted they might be even if they were very mainstream.
Potential expansions to legal protections for invertebrates in Australia
In the Australian state of New South Wales, upper state house member Emma Hurst has introduced legislation to amend the state’s Prevention of Cruelty to Animals law, introduced in 1979, to include crustaceans and cephalopods as fully covered under the law.
By my reading, the current form of the law, which generally bans a variety of types of cruelty, abandonment, and other harms, already applies to crustaceans in retail environments or restaurants.
The amendment would expand these protections to all cephalopods and crustaceans. It’s unclear to me how this would impact farming or killing of these animals for food in NSW.
MP Hurst is one of two MPs in New South Wales representing the Animal Justice Party. As all things must be balanced, the chamber also has two members of the Shooters, Fishers, and Farmers Party.
Miscellaneous Links
72% of participants in a UK study reported that they would eat eggs from laying hens raised on insects.
Time Magazine covered the environmental effects of eating insects.
The Irish Journal of Food and Agriculture Research published a study on Irish consumers’ willingness to eat insects.
EcoWatch published an article critical of the lack of regulation around the development of gene-modifying insecticides.
A study in The Journal of Apicultural Research reviewed when euthanasia might be acceptable in managed honeybee colonies, and the kind of research needed to identify the least painful euthanasia methods for bees.
Unilever has released a line of carmine-free lipsticks, after several years of development.
Their announcement includes explicit mentions of insect welfare and the very large numbers of cochineals killed to produce the red dye that is used in many cosmetics.
Oddly, their announcement video seems to feature a lot of what appear to me to be darkling beetles, which aren’t killed for dye (but are farmed in their larval form for food). Maybe cochineals aren’t charismatic enough to make the cut.
An academic essay collection released on Gender and Sexuality in Critical Animal Studies features an essay on the anthropomorphization of bees, specifically through the lens of gender labels applied to them (e.g. Queen bee), and cites this as a barrier to recognition of bees’ rights to freedom and resources as individuals.