Humane slaughter of insects for human consumption
I’m not sure I agree with this assertion made in a recent Wired article about edible grasshoppers:
…insects are packed with protein, much less damaging to the environment than other livestock, and can even be killed humanely by popping them in the freezer.
First of all, any livestock raised with good management techniques should actively benefit “the environment” by incorporating its life cycles into the super-system of which the farm is an integrated component. Or at least that’s how it goes in my, admittedly, prosaic world-view.
Second, the question of humane insect slaughter is anything but locked down. Does popping a living thing into a freezer really count as “humane” or is it just convenient?
Wikipedia has a decent starting point for further research on the topic of Welfare of Farmed Insects, only a section of which I will quote from here:
Scientists remain uncertain about the existence and degree of pain in invertebrates, including insects. Nonetheless, insect welfare is being taken increasingly seriously in laboratory settings.[1][2] Vincent Wigglesworth suggested a precautionary approach of anaesthetizing insects during potentially painful procedures.[3] John Cooper has written about techniques for “Anesthesia, analgesia, and euthanasia of invertebrates” including insects.[4] Neil A. C. Bennie and colleagues proposed a method for chemical euthanasia of insects and other terrestrial arthropods.[5]
Whether “scientists remain uncertain,” anyone can experimentally verify that insects — like most animals — appear to actively avoid their own destruction. Given that they have sensory organs, coupled with this observation that they appear to avoid destruction, it’s no great leap of logic to infer that insects feel pain. In fact, a sympathetic viewpoint towards all beings would in fact demand that we assume this as our starting point in dealing with these (and all other) creatures.
I’ll also pop in here the “Industrial Farms” section of the Wikipedia source material as reference for further research:
Little research has been done on humane methods of killing insects for consumption.[7]
The most common killing methods used by entomophagy companies in the Netherlands are freezing and dry-freezing (i.e., freezing and reducing pressure in order to extract water from the insects).[7]
Protix Biosystems kills its black soldier flies by shredding, since its end product is a powder. Death takes less than a second. Tarique Arsiwalla at Protix said shredding makes sense because Western consumers are more likely to accept powdered insects than whole insects.[6]
The Jagran company has tried asphyxiation, cooling, freeze-drying, boiling, and shredding. Managing Director Walter Jansen believes that shredding is most humane.[6]
The Kreca company kills its animal-feed insects by putting them into a fridge or freeze-drying them. Insects destined for human consumption are first sterilized in hot water and then are refrigerated or freeze-dried.[6]
FAO’s “Edible insects” report suggests: “Insect-killing methods that would reduce suffering include freezing or instantaneous techniques such as shredding.”
Based on this preliminary research alone — we haven’t even scratched the surface really — I am willing to say that we’re just not sure yet what the best methods for humanely killing insects really are. And if we’re all going to jump on the band-wagon/fad, I think we owe it to us and them to spend a bit more time figuring out what really are the best ways.
