The Nonlinear Library EA - Research summary: farmed cricket welfare by abrahamrowe
Mar 7, 2024
27:22
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Research summary: farmed cricket welfare, published by abrahamrowe on March 7, 2024 on The Effective Altruism Forum.
This post is a short summary of Farmed Cricket (Acheta domesticus, Gryllus assimilis, and Gryllodes sigillatus; Orthoptera) Welfare Considerations: Recommendations for Improving Global Practice, a peer-reviewed, open access publication on cricket welfare in the Journal of Insects as Food and Feed under a CC BY 4.0 license. The paper and supplemental information can be accessed
here. The original paper was written by Elizabeth Rowe, Karen Robles López, Kristin Robinson, Kaitlin Baudier, and Meghan Barrett; the research conducted in the paper was funded by Rethink Priorities as part of our research agenda on understanding the welfare of insects on farms.
This post was written by Abraham Rowe (no relation to Elizabeth Rowe) and reviewed for accuracy by Meghan Barrett. All information is derived from the Elizabeth Rowe et al. (2024) publication, and some text from the original publication is directly adapted for this summary.
Summary
As of 2020, around 370 to 420 billion crickets and grasshoppers were farmed annually for food and feed, though today the number may be much higher.
Rowe et al. (2024) is the first publication to consider species-specific welfare concerns for several species of crickets on industrialized insect farms.
The authors identify 15 current and 5 future welfare concerns, and make recommendations for reducing the harms from these concerns. These concerns include:
Stocking density
High stocking densities can increase the rates of aggression, cannibalism, and behavioral repression among individuals on cricket farms.
Disease
Diseases are relatively common on cricket farms. Common diseases, such as Acheta domesticus densovirus, can cause up to 100% cricket mortality.
Slaughter
Common slaughter methods for crickets on farms include freezing in air, blanching/boiling, and convection baking. Little is known about the relative welfare costs of these methods, and the best ways for a producer to implement a given method.
Future concerns that haven't yet been realized on farms include:
Novel feed substrates
Farmers have explored potentially giving crickets novel feeds, including food waste. This might be nutritionally inadequate or introduce diseases or other issues onto farms.
Selective breeding and genetic modification
In vertebrate animals, selective breeding has caused a large number of welfare issues. The same might be expected to become true for crickets.
Background information
Cricket farming
Insect farming, including of crickets, has been presented as a more sustainable approach to meet the protein demand of a growing human population. While wild-caught orthopterans (crickets and grasshoppers) are a traditional protein source around the world, modern cricket farming aims to industrialize the rearing and slaughter of crickets as a food source. As of 2020, 370-420 billion orthopterans were slaughtered or sold live, with crickets being the most common.
Welfare framework
The Five Domains model of welfare, which has been promoted for invertebrates, evaluates animal welfare by looking at the nutrition, environment, physical health, behavior, and mental states of the animals being evaluated. The authors use this model for evaluating cricket farming and potential improvements that could be made on farms for animal welfare.
Cricket biology
Three of the most common species of crickets farmed belong to the Gryllinae subfamily: Acheta domesticus, Gryllus assimilis, and Gryllodes sigillatus. All three species live between 80 and 120 days from hatching to natural death, with a 10-21 day incubation period. Crickets are hemimetabolous insects: they hatch from an egg, molting through a series of nymph stages called instars, before going through a terminal ...
This post is a short summary of Farmed Cricket (Acheta domesticus, Gryllus assimilis, and Gryllodes sigillatus; Orthoptera) Welfare Considerations: Recommendations for Improving Global Practice, a peer-reviewed, open access publication on cricket welfare in the Journal of Insects as Food and Feed under a CC BY 4.0 license. The paper and supplemental information can be accessed
here. The original paper was written by Elizabeth Rowe, Karen Robles López, Kristin Robinson, Kaitlin Baudier, and Meghan Barrett; the research conducted in the paper was funded by Rethink Priorities as part of our research agenda on understanding the welfare of insects on farms.
This post was written by Abraham Rowe (no relation to Elizabeth Rowe) and reviewed for accuracy by Meghan Barrett. All information is derived from the Elizabeth Rowe et al. (2024) publication, and some text from the original publication is directly adapted for this summary.
Summary
As of 2020, around 370 to 420 billion crickets and grasshoppers were farmed annually for food and feed, though today the number may be much higher.
Rowe et al. (2024) is the first publication to consider species-specific welfare concerns for several species of crickets on industrialized insect farms.
The authors identify 15 current and 5 future welfare concerns, and make recommendations for reducing the harms from these concerns. These concerns include:
Stocking density
High stocking densities can increase the rates of aggression, cannibalism, and behavioral repression among individuals on cricket farms.
Disease
Diseases are relatively common on cricket farms. Common diseases, such as Acheta domesticus densovirus, can cause up to 100% cricket mortality.
Slaughter
Common slaughter methods for crickets on farms include freezing in air, blanching/boiling, and convection baking. Little is known about the relative welfare costs of these methods, and the best ways for a producer to implement a given method.
Future concerns that haven't yet been realized on farms include:
Novel feed substrates
Farmers have explored potentially giving crickets novel feeds, including food waste. This might be nutritionally inadequate or introduce diseases or other issues onto farms.
Selective breeding and genetic modification
In vertebrate animals, selective breeding has caused a large number of welfare issues. The same might be expected to become true for crickets.
Background information
Cricket farming
Insect farming, including of crickets, has been presented as a more sustainable approach to meet the protein demand of a growing human population. While wild-caught orthopterans (crickets and grasshoppers) are a traditional protein source around the world, modern cricket farming aims to industrialize the rearing and slaughter of crickets as a food source. As of 2020, 370-420 billion orthopterans were slaughtered or sold live, with crickets being the most common.
Welfare framework
The Five Domains model of welfare, which has been promoted for invertebrates, evaluates animal welfare by looking at the nutrition, environment, physical health, behavior, and mental states of the animals being evaluated. The authors use this model for evaluating cricket farming and potential improvements that could be made on farms for animal welfare.
Cricket biology
Three of the most common species of crickets farmed belong to the Gryllinae subfamily: Acheta domesticus, Gryllus assimilis, and Gryllodes sigillatus. All three species live between 80 and 120 days from hatching to natural death, with a 10-21 day incubation period. Crickets are hemimetabolous insects: they hatch from an egg, molting through a series of nymph stages called instars, before going through a terminal ...