Invertebrate Welfare — August 2021

August 2021 updates on invertebrate welfare

EPA bans chlorpyrifos

• The Environmental Protection Agency in the USA (EPA) has banned chlorpyrifos, one of the most commonly used pesticides in the US. This class of organophosphate pesticides has been primarily used in agricultural contexts. 

  • Although the intent of the ban was to prevent side effects for human health, environmental groups have also been lobbying for it to be banned due to its effects on birds and mammals for years. 

  • It is unclear what the counterfactual impacts of this ban will be, given that other insecticides will be used in its place. Until we know more about the relative suffering caused by different types of pesticides, understanding the effects of such bans on the individuals most affected (insects themselves) will be difficult, since chlorpyrifos will likely just be replaced by a different pesticide. 

  • Organophosphates cause key enzymes in the nervous system to stop functioning in both insects and humans.

  • In particular, given the high lethality of organophosphates and especially chlorpyrifos, it's possible they kill more quickly (and thereby cause less suffering to insects) than other pesticides. These points and additional directions for future research are identified in Wild Animal Initiative’s report on pesticide use.

UK Sentience Bill

• The parliament of the United Kingdom is considering a sweeping piece of animal welfare legislation. The bill would create an “animal sentience committee” responsible for analyzing how UK policy affects individual sentient animals. It could also create a broad requirement for all branches of the UK government to consider harms to individual animals as part of legislation creation. 

  • Most prior legislation on animal welfare has focused on animals intentionally exploited or kept, such as agricultural animals or companion animals. This legislation is groundbreaking because it requires the government to consider the sentience of wild animals as well. 

  • Unfortunately, the bill as currently written covers only vertebrate animals. Activists are pushing for this to change, and for the bill to at least to cover crustaceans, and several members of the House of Lords have argued that cephalopods should also be included.

    • A side benefit of the lack of inclusion, though, has been an increase in media attention to the topic of invertebrate sentience. Several commentaries have been published on the topic of crustacean and cephalopod sentience and moral personhood. 

  • The bill is currently at the report stage in the House of Lords, and has a long road through the House of Commons to follow if it makes it. Adding to the uncertainty of its passage, there have been several critiques of the bill.

    • Some (paywalled) commentators suggest that the bill is too sweeping, and represents excessive action from vegan activists: “Once animal sentience becomes the test of every policy, who knows where it might lead. To the banning of zoos? Of horse-racing? Of pets?”

    • Confusingly, other commentators suggest (paywalled) that the bill will actually do nothing for animals, and only inflate bureaucratic power. It remains to be seen how a single item of legislation can both have no impact for animals and simultaneously cause the ushering in of the vegan world-order, but who knows?

    • Either way, the legislation is getting attention beyond UK borders, as this law could influence the animal-based economy and set a precedent for others.

Insects farmed for food

• The moral dimensions of insect farming have recently received increased media attention. An article in Aeon by Jeff Sebo and Jason Schukraft discussing our moral duties not to cause insect suffering via farming stimulated additional debate, including an interview with Sebo on the topic, and two counter-arguments in the National Review.

  • The first counterargument does not appear to genuinely engage with the questions raised by Sebo and Schukraft, but I include it for thoroughness. Note that it is written by a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute’s Center on Human Exceptionalism, which appears to hold as an inarguable premise that humans are more important than every other species, and treat the conclusion that insects might matter as a reductio ad absurdum of arguments denying human supremacy.

  • Sebo and Schukraft’s article at least appears to have stimulated more interesting conversation from the other respondent, who appears more willing to at least contemplate the possibility of insects experiencing morally relevant sensations.

  • More interestingly, the Aeon article calls into question the claims (made by, for example, the World Wildlife Fund) that insect farming is the answer to climate change. 

    • Sebo and Schukraft point out that insect farming is not generally being proposed as an alternative to traditional agriculture, but rather a supplement to it (particularly in the form of reduced cost animal feed, which will likely make it even cheaper and easier to exploit livestock). 

• As the debate goes on, regulatory barriers to insects used for food and feed continue to fall, as the European Food Safety Authority has released a report that locusts (Locusta migratoria) are safe to consume under some proposed uses. 

• A new opinion in Journal of Cleaner Production argues that supplementing broiler chicken feed with insect protein can reduce the environmental impact of chicken farming.

  • The paper seems to lean heavily on insects being fed food waste, which is not necessarily legal or possible for all species.

  • The author’s own model shows that most of the environmental benefit would appear if humans ate insects directly, but use the marginal improvements in broiler production sustainability to argue for feeding them to broiler chickens instead.

• Additionally, attitudes to using insects as feed for other animals appear to be variable, according to two studies in the Journal of Insects as Food and Feed. 

  • For example, fisherman may generally be willing to use fishmeal made from insects, although finding high-quality insect meal at cost-competitive prices continues to be a barrier.        

  • Among end-consumers, willingness to purchase poultry fed with insects is dependent upon a range of factors, including whether they’ve been told it will be good for the environment, their animal welfare inclinations, and previous experiences eating insects.

• Major new investments in insect farming:

  • Mealworm producer Beta Hatch raised $10 million USD to expand production facilities.

  • Three US research universities received a $2.2 million USD grant from the National Science Foundation to launch “The Center for Environmental Sustainability Through Insect Farming.”

  • INSEACT, which raises black soldier flies on palm oil production waste as shrimp feed, raised $1.3 million USD from the Asian Development Bank, a major shrimp producer, and other investors.

Miscellaneous

• A citizen science project found that during the heatwaves on North America’s west coast over the summer, more than a billion intertidal invertebrates, such as snails, mussels, clams, and starfish, may have been cooked to death by the heat.

• A video of microfauna inside of a termite gut won Nikon’s 2021 Small World in Motion competition for microscopic video.

• The Russian Journal of Biological Invasions [sic] published a history of sterile insect technique and related genetic modification insect population control methods.

• The Irish Times published an article on the research of Robert Elwood into decapod crustacean pain sensitivity.

• Major squid fishing companies have joined together to form the Squid IUU Prevention Working Group, which will work to curb unregulated squid fishing.