The breadth of the confidence intervals in any animal suffering research, particularly once it moves away from vertebrates, makes me feel like this work wonât ever lead to any actionable conclusions beyond âtorturing things is bad, avoid if possibleâ, which we sort of knew from the start.
Just to clarify: the problem is that we donât know what is and isnât torture. Is freezing insects the humane way to kill themâor is it a slow and painful way for them to die? The default view among entomologists is the former, but there are lots of physiological considerations that point in the other direction. I think youâre assuming that we know a lot more than we do about how to improve the lives of insects on farms given the options available.
âSlowâ and âpainfulâ very different.
âSlowâ yes, you could study how long it takes for freezing to kill them or stop their neurons firing, though this doesnât seem like very useful information.
âPainfulâ is the key and the problem: I donât see any way toward quantifying how subjectively âpainfulâ something is for an insect and how much we should spend to avoid that pain, hence there will always be a stalemate when it comes to implementation.
I agree that the field is full of uncertainty.
The breadth of the confidence intervals in any animal suffering research, particularly once it moves away from vertebrates, makes me feel like this work wonât ever lead to any actionable conclusions beyond âtorturing things is bad, avoid if possibleâ, which we sort of knew from the start.
Just to clarify: the problem is that we donât know what is and isnât torture. Is freezing insects the humane way to kill themâor is it a slow and painful way for them to die? The default view among entomologists is the former, but there are lots of physiological considerations that point in the other direction. I think youâre assuming that we know a lot more than we do about how to improve the lives of insects on farms given the options available.
âSlowâ and âpainfulâ very different. âSlowâ yes, you could study how long it takes for freezing to kill them or stop their neurons firing, though this doesnât seem like very useful information. âPainfulâ is the key and the problem: I donât see any way toward quantifying how subjectively âpainfulâ something is for an insect and how much we should spend to avoid that pain, hence there will always be a stalemate when it comes to implementation.