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Insects farmed for food and feed — global scale, practices, and policy

- Currently, 1 trillion to 1.2 trillion insects are raised on farms annually for food and animal feed.- There are currently between 79 billion and 94 billion insects alive on farms globally on average on an average day.- While it is unclear what welfare reforms might best improve the lives of insects on farms, it seems possible that standardized training on best practices, and potentially slaughter reform are promising ways to improve insect welfare on farms.- The countries that farm the most insects in the world are Thailand, France, South Africa, China, Canada, and the United States.- The industry is rapidly growing —millions of dollars have been invested into startups that are working to industrialize the industry, especially to produce insect alternatives to animal feed and fishmeal. This also means that the scale could increase by one or more orders of magnitude in the near future.- Note that these estimates only include insects whose bodies are eaten in whole or powdered form for food and animal feed. They do not include insects farmed for a food product they produce (such as honey bees), nor insects who have a food additive produced with a minor derivative of their bodies (such as cochineals). This research also does not cover wild insects collected for food or animal feed. Finally, this research does not cover annelids raised for fishing bait, though some of the insects sold live described in this report are likely used for fishing bait.