Research summary - farmed cricket welfare (Rethink Priorities)

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.