Making insects tick: Responsibility, attentiveness and care in edible insect farming

Abstract

Insects are increasingly promoted as a sustainable and nutritious source of protein, with ‘edible insect’ sectors emerging in many countries not traditionally associated with their consumption. A number of studies have examined the attitudes of potential consumers to eating insects but the understandings and practices of farmers have largely been ignored. This article expands nature-society scholarship’s engagement with the edible insect sector by investigating how farmers make sense of their responsibilities to insects through their everyday practices. Drawing on a qualitative study of the UK’s edible insect farmers, the article contributes to wider ongoing debates within science and technology studies and animal studies around multispecies companionship involving apparently ‘awkward’ creatures, and around the relationship between ‘care’ and ‘ethical regard’ in more-than-human relations. Such debates are especially pertinent here, as insects have often been understood as lacking sentience and beyond moral considerability, resulting in their exclusion from animal welfare codes and regulation. Insect farmers are therefore faced with questions not only about how to care for their ‘minilivestock’ but also whether to care. Following an outline of the UK’s edible insect production sector, and framed by a discussion of literature on awkward creatures, attentiveness and practices of care, the article reports on: (1) the relationship between sentience and farmers’ constructions of insects’ moral significance; (2) farmers’ motives for, and approaches to, becoming attentive to their insects; and (3) how farmers respond to the actions of insects. It concludes by reflecting on the nature of attentiveness encountered in edible insect farming, arguing that it offers a promising yet unstable basis for the development of harmonious more-than-human relations.

Edible Insects as Food–Insect Welfare and Ethical Aspects from a Consumer Perspective

“…In addition, few guidelines specifically mention animal welfare as an aspect to consider when keeping insects. Consequently, insect farmers often have to guess and 'trial-and-error' best practices [22,25,26]. Interviewing twelve insect farmers and one representative of the insect industry in the UK, Bear [25,26] exemplifies how producers perceive and cope with the "ethical ambiguity of insect production" [26] (p. 1011).…”

“…Consequently, insect farmers often have to guess and 'trial-and-error' best practices [22,25,26]. Interviewing twelve insect farmers and one representative of the insect industry in the UK, Bear [25,26] exemplifies how producers perceive and cope with the "ethical ambiguity of insect production" [26] (p. 1011). Regarding acceptable slaughter methods, for example, one insect farmer reported that they had to "make it up" [25] (p. 760), and another farmer stated: "I wouldn't have thought being frozen stiff was especially nice, but I have no idea and it just seems to be a reasonable way to do it" [25] (p. 761).…”

“…Over the last years, several papers have raised the issue of animal welfare in the context of insect farming (e.g., [10,[22][23][24][25][26]). In addition, the International Platform of Insects for Food and Feed [27] has been trying to promote insect welfare by applying Brambell's [28] Five Freedoms to insect farming and encouraging producers to follow them.…”

Descending Control of Nociception in Insects?

“…(Appel & Elwood, 2009;Crook, 2021). This is important morally, as insects are subjected to potentially-painful stimuli in research and farming (Bear, 2021). It is also an important consideration for modelling human pain disorders.…”

Destructive care

“…Recent suggestions to think with care in science and technology studies (Puig de la Bellacasa, 2011) and "to take a more critical stance toward the politics of care in technoscience" (Murphy, 2015, p. 719) manifest further mutual interaction between the concepts of care and maintenance. Whereas the concept of care is increasingly applied to non-human agents (Bear, 2020;Beckett, 2020;Denis & Pontille, 2015;Martin et al, 2015;Puig de la Bellacasa, 2015;Schrader, 2015;Ureta, 2014Ureta, & 2016Viseu, 2015), maintenance and repair studies still focus primarily on technologies and infrastructures. This article aims to extend the realm of maintenance and repair to explore humans' bodily and material caretaking activities.…”