Besides trying to get people to eat plant-based and cultured foods instead, are there any promising ways to undermine the advance of insect farming, rather than just make it more humane? Maybe eliciting disgust reactions, expensive regulations to meet, promoting NIMBYISM? Could undercover investigations slow it?
Given we know so little about their potential capacities and what alters their welfare, Iโd suggest the potential factory farming of insects is potentially quite bad. However, I donโt know what methods are effective at discouraging people from consuming them, though some of the things you suggest seem plausible paths here. I think it is pretty hard to say much on the tractability of these things, without further research.
Also, we are generally keen to hear from folks who are interested in doing further work on invertebrates. And, personally, if you know of anyone interested in working on things like this I would encourage them to apply to be ED of the Insect Welfare Project.
Preventing the farms from being built, but I guess they would just find somewhere else to build them, although the delay and costs might spare some insects. Iโd guess insect farms would be less polluting than mammal and bird farms, so this might be harder to push.
Besides trying to get people to eat plant-based and cultured foods instead, are there any promising ways to undermine the advance of insect farming, rather than just make it more humane? Maybe eliciting disgust reactions, expensive regulations to meet, promoting NIMBYISM? Could undercover investigations slow it?
It seems that attitudes towards insects as food are worse than towards other alternative proteins. Can we reinforce that?
Given we know so little about their potential capacities and what alters their welfare, Iโd suggest the potential factory farming of insects is potentially quite bad. However, I donโt know what methods are effective at discouraging people from consuming them, though some of the things you suggest seem plausible paths here. I think it is pretty hard to say much on the tractability of these things, without further research.
Also, we are generally keen to hear from folks who are interested in doing further work on invertebrates. And, personally, if you know of anyone interested in working on things like this I would encourage them to apply to be ED of the Insect Welfare Project.
How is NIMBYism helpful?
Preventing the farms from being built, but I guess they would just find somewhere else to build them, although the delay and costs might spare some insects. Iโd guess insect farms would be less polluting than mammal and bird farms, so this might be harder to push.