Re your article on eating crickets to save the world (The rise of ‘ento-veganism’: how eating crickets could help save the world, 7 August), it is true that crickets have a lower environmental impact than conventional meat. However, nearly all foods have a lower environmental impact than conventional meat. The trick is not finding something more environmentally friendly than meat, but rather finding something consumers will eat instead of meat.
Most consumers do not want to eat farmed insects, and when they are sold as food, they often come in the form of products like baked goods, pasta or flour, which compete not with meat but with foods possessing comparatively low environmental impacts. A Rabobank report described the share of farmed insects consumed by humans as “negligible”.
Most farmed insects are instead fed to other animals. Recent peer-reviewed research, which I co-authored and which is published in the journal Sustainable Production and Consumption, shows that companies rearing insects at scale generally rely on materials that could be fed directly to other animals or used by other sectors, and, due to practical challenges, this is not likely to change in the future. Instead of saving the world, insect farming mostly adds an inefficient and expensive layer to the food system we already have.
Rather than forcing insects on a wary public, resources would be better devoted to alternative proteins such as plant-based or cultivated meats that have the potential to transform our food system while avoiding the consumer acceptance and animal welfare concerns mentioned in the article.
Dustin Crummett
Executive director, the Insect Institute
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