The Hinge of Insect History

the most important thing you'll read this year

Photo by David Clode on Unsplash

“We live during the hinge of history. Given the scientific and technological discoveries of the last two centuries, the world has never changed as fast. We shall soon have even greater powers to transform, not only our surroundings, but ourselves and our successors. If we act wisely in the next few centuries, humanity will survive its most dangerous and decisive period. Our descendants could, if necessary, go elsewhere, spreading through this galaxy.” — Derek Parfit, On What Matters, Volume II, 2011, p. 616.

In “they’re eating the bugs!”, I argued that insect welfare is an extremely pressing moral concern. Though this may seem to fly in the face of reason (wince), hive never been more serious about anysting.

The bug big idea is this: insects are the most farmed animals on the planet — each year, we kill around 1-1.2 trillion insects for feed (mostly for pets and livestock). Increasingly, evidence mounts that many insects feel pain. Out of righteous epistemic deference to our scientific overlords, we should assume there’s a good chance they do.

If insects feel pain, that would be very bad. In other animal protein sectors — beef, pork, poultry, seafood — there are at least minimal welfare regulations governing what farmers can do to their animals. In the emerging insect sector, by contrast, there’s essentially zippedy-do. Given that the insects we farm — predominantly: black soldier flies, crickets, and mealworms — are subjected to a litany of potentially painful procedures (mass starvation, boiling, ovening, convection baking, microwaving, shredding, being packed together with unnaturally high densities in a way that promotes widespread cannibalism and disease, etc.), if there’s even a decent chance that these critters feel pain, that chance should concern us greatly.

In the above-quoted passage, the late great philosopher Derek Parfit suggests that we, right now, live during the hinge of history. Though Parfit doesn’t expand on this thought, he probably meant something like: ‘we humans live at a uniquely influential time, where we have the opportunity to do more good for the future of humanity than either our ancestors or our future children.’

There’s a lively, ongoing debate about Parfit’s ‘Hinge of History Hypothesis’, particularly as applied to human history. In this firecracker of a blog post, I want to sidestep the question of human history and zoom in on creepy-crawlies. (If you want a ‘splainer of the arguments for and against the Hinge of History Hypothesis, check out this neat video by Kane B:)

Regardless of whether we’re living at the hinge of human history, I want to push the case that we’re living at the hinge of farmed insect history. (Of course, we’re currently having a sizeable impact on wild insects too — but that’s for another day.)

Here’s the big idea: according to a widely cited 2021 report from Rabobank, the insect industry is likely to produce around 500,000 metric tons of insect protein in 2030. This, the report predicts, will “represent a turning point for the insect industry”:

“The insect industry is on a path to increase scale, backed by investments and partnerships. Efficiency gains due to increasing technology, automation, improvements in genetics, and legislative changes will also enable costs to decrease. After reaching half a million metric tons, it will get easier for the industry to expand supply. From that point on, it will take much less time to double or even quadruple production volume and exceed one million metric tons.”

Legislation, high production costs, and limited production capacity are the big three factors holding the sector back; if the insect industry manages to jump these early hurdles, it may well expand considerably.

The next few years are the years in which the industry will decide how to run its farming facilities, the biggest of which are still under construction. Once the industry has made these supply-side decisions, including those that impinge on insect welfare — storage, slaughter methods, etc. — the practices it decides on are likely to lock in to a considerable degree. After 2030 (or whenever the industry undergoes its ‘turning point’), efforts to change the industry’s practices — through legislation and lobbying — are likely to be met with more resistance, since the transition costs of implementing welfare reforms will be higher.

Fortunately, there’s apparently some hope that — at this early stage — the insect industry will be receptive to welfare considerations. According to Bob Fischer, one of the small handful of people today working on insect welfare, industry insiders are surprisingly receptive to welfare concerns. For one thing, insect entrepreneurs tend to be fairly values-oriented, given that a driving motivation for the sector is sustainability. For another, apparently many industry insiders are already concerned about welfare, but don’t feel enabled to voice these concerns without support. There’s a good chance Fischer was being a somewhat political in saying this, though, so take that claim with a pinch of salt.)

We may well be living during the hinge of farmed insect history. As such, there may never be a better time to donate to organisations like the Insect Institute or the Insect Welfare Research Society. To put my money where my mouth is, if anyone donates $30 or more to either charity, and sends me the receipt over the next month, they get a free, lifetime paid subscription to Going Awol. Let’s go help some mealworms!

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