Besides not thinking about insects when we hear the word “animals,” we also exclude them from our scope of moral consideration. We tend to just assume that insects are not sentient beings – or at least that they are not as sentient as vertebrates.
Over 99.9% of animals in the world are invertebrates. Yet, when
most humans hear the word “animal” instead of thinking about a dog
or a cow, we should think about an octopus, a bee or any other
invertebrate, as they account for the vast majority of animals.
There is an estimation that, at any time, there are some 10
quintillion (10,000,000,000,000,000,000) individual insects alive.
If the number of insects in the world is impressive, so is the
extent of human use of those animals. Exploitation of bees for their
honey is an example of such. A lot has been said about the necessity
of protecting bees for their function as pollinators to support life
on Earth.[4] However, it is not as often said that depriving bees of
their honey means denying them access to their vital nourishment.
Some products involve insect exploitation without consumers even
realizing it. Silk and carmine are great examples of that. Many are
not aware that silk is produced by worms and moths. Even fewer know
what a horrendous practice is behind that production. In order to
remove silkworms from their cocoons, where silk is, insects are
boiled to death. It is estimated that, for just one meter of fabric,
3,000 to 15,000 silkworms are submitted to that extremely cruel
process.[6] As to carmine, a red pigment used in the preparation of
many foods, it is made from crushed bodies of cochineal insects.
According to PETA, in order to produce one pound of the pigment,
70,000 beetles must be killed.
Among the many examples of insect exploitation, insect farming might
be the most relevant one. Entomophagy, the practice of eating
insects, has been increasing world widely, making insect farming a
rapid growing industry.[8] Especially because edible insects are
being considered the “food of the future,” breeding insects as
livestock is raising animal welfare concerns.[10]
Fried Grasshoppers... Pixabay.com
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