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As with other livestock animals, a variety of welfare concerns can manifest during the rearing and slaughter of insects. The 5 Domains framework can be used to broadly categorize these areas of possible concern into four functional domains (nutrition, environment, behavior, and physical health) which then influence the mental domain of the animal's welfare state. [17]
Insects form an important part of the food chain, especially for entomophagous vertebrates such as many mammals, birds, amphibians, and reptiles. Insects play a critical role in maintaining community structure and composition; in the case of animals through diseases transmission, predation and parasitism , and in plants through phytophagy and ...
Developing edible insects as a source of food when other forms of protein such as poultry and bovine are less available and less sustainable has been explored. Insects explored for food and feed include crickets, grasshoppers, caterpillars, ants, dragonflies, scale insects, flies, and more.
Within an ecological food chain, consumers are categorized into primary consumers, secondary consumers, and tertiary consumers. [3] Primary consumers are herbivores, feeding on plants or algae. Caterpillars, insects, grasshoppers, termites and hummingbirds are all examples of primary consumers because they only eat autotrophs (plants).
Sustainable food systems have been argued to be central to many [1] or all [2] 17 Sustainable Development Goals. [3] Moving to sustainable food systems, including via shifting consumption to sustainable diets, is an important component of addressing the causes of climate change and adapting to it.
Sustainable agriculture is farming in sustainable ways meeting society's present food and textile needs, without compromising the ability for current or future generations to meet their needs. [1] It can be based on an understanding of ecosystem services. There are many methods to increase the sustainability of agriculture.
Insects as feed are insect species used as animal feed, either for livestock, including aquaculture, or as pet food. As livestock feed production uses ~33% of the world's agricultural cropland use, insects might be able to supplement livestock feed. They can transform low-value organic wastes, are nutritious and have low environmental impacts.
Food chain in a Swedish lake. Osprey feed on northern pike, which in turn feed on perch which eat bleak which eat crustaceans.. A food chain is a linear network of links in a food web, often starting with an autotroph (such as grass or algae), also called a producer, and typically ending at an apex predator (such as grizzly bears or killer whales), detritivore (such as earthworms and woodlice ...