The European Union will soon permit the sale of locusts, crickets, grasshoppers, and mealworms as food across the continent.
The European Food Safety Authority is expected to announce the ruling within the next few weeks, granting bugs a “novel food” classification that would allow the mass production of bug-based food items by autumn.
“These have a good chance of being given the green light in the coming few weeks,” the secretary-general of the International Platform of Insects for Food and Feed, Christophe Derrien, told The Guardian.
“We reckon these authorizations will be a breakthrough for the sector so we are looking for those authorizations quite impatiently. They are taking the necessary time, they are very demanding on information, which is not bad. But we believe that once we have the first novel food given a green light from EFSA that will have a snowball effect,” Derrien added.
In 1997, the EU passed a law requiring a “novel food” classification for products that did not have a history of being consumed as food by Europeans.
The United Kingdom, Belgium, Finland, Denmark, and the Netherlands all decided that the law did not apply to animals and therefore continued to permit the sale of bugs as food.
Countries like France, Spain, and Italy decided to ban the sale of insects as food as a result of the law.
The eating of insects has long been touted by climate change activists as a possible replacement for meat, which they claim negatively impacts the environment. However, eating bugs has remained a niche practice in the West.
Industry experts hope that the loosening of restrictions will open up market opportunities for the edible insect business, with companies in Spain, France, and Switzerland ramping up production.
“We are expecting the next few years will be very interesting ones and obviously the novel food authorizations will definitely help,” Derrien said.
“The sort of foods ranges from whole insects as an aperitif or as snacks to processed insects in bars or pasta or burgers made out of insects,” he added.
“We believe that insects for food [are] one solution for some of the biggest challenges we are facing on the planet. In the context of scarce resources, and insect production is not too demanding, you have the capacity to produce high-quality protein. That is a very promising solution,” Derrien concluded.
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Wait a second, it is no longer a good idea to start eating insects, the covid19 pandemic reminds us we should not eat things that are not commonly ate or farmed around the world. Things that may harbour diseases we have no resistance to. Consumption of insects may result in outbreak after outbreak.
Exactly! Dr. Fauci suggested that we ban the weird animal / human interface that has brought us so much grief. AIDS from monkeys, for example. Chinese wet markets exist outside of China, amongst us. Creepy. Western civilization has a healthy food chain. It should be supported.
I’m totally with you on the spirit of what you are saying. However, eating bugs, as gross as it is, is safer than our traditional meat. That is because the bug’s biology is very different than ours, so the chance of a virus the can infects some species of bug also being a serious disease in humans is pretty small.
One disturbing part of this article is that in some nations their citizens can’t eat bugs without government permission.
From the article, “Industry experts hope that the loosening of restrictions will open up market opportunities for the edible insect business.” If this were true, wouldn’t there already but a booming business in nations that already permit eating bugs? These people just don’t think. Let the climate activists eat bugs, the rest of us will enjoy steak.
JPS is right on. We have a real problem that is very serious and shouldn’t be wasting our time on fake problems.
To become an “industry”, they will need more than bugs captured in the wild. So, “insect farming”. What will these insects be fed? How will the feed be delivered? What happens when a swarm of these insects escapes (if they’re the flying kind), or is ‘liberated’ by a “Save The Bugs” organization? Methane production? Questions, always questions…..
The Euroweenie Union what a bunch of Morons forcing their people to eat bugs all over this whole Glogol Warming/Climate Change lie and you know how this would get those jerk at PETA and the HSUS real upset over their whole repulsive idea bugs are food for Birds,Frogs,Spiders,Some Mammals and Carniverous Insects
And one more thing:
I will NEVER EVER eat bugs, that’s for animals. Which I WILL eat.
“We believe that insects for food [are] one solution for some of the biggest challenges we are facing on the planet.”
Did he forget that we are fighting a REAL problem right now and we do NOT NEED a fake problem with even more stupid (and maybe deadly) solutions?