Buzzing: Insects back in the black in Blighty
Hello everyone from a gloriously hot London, how are you all doing?
The newsletter is a bit UK-centric this week, but hopefully still of interest for everyone!
This week in Buzzing:
The regulator’s U-turn on legality is welcome, but there is still room for improvement
In Other News: Insect protein is art, it’s official.
Test Corner: Entomo Farms’ flavoured crickets
Last week, I was sent a circular from the Food Safety Agency (FSA), the UK’s food safety watchdog. In it, the FSA essentially admitted it had got it wrong when it’d made insects illegal in Great Britain last year and retracted its decision.
“The FSA is retracting its previous letter as it contained an error relating to the expiry of the transitional measures for the marketing of insects.”
The decision is a massive relief for the sector – although it will come too late for those who were forced to close down or lost business because of the FSA’s error.
The FSA has now set out proposals to allow edible insects to remain on sale if they were marketed in the EU or the UK before 1 January 2018 and were the subject of an application to the EU for authorisation as a novel food by 1 January 2019. (This list includes house crickets, banded crickets, yellow mealworms, lesser mealworms, grasshoppers, honey bee drone brood and Black Soldier Fly.)
Applications for authorisation of these insects must now be made to the FSA (or Food Standards Scotland) by 31 December 2023 for the product to remain on the market while the application is assessed. (The Woven Network submitted an application for acheta domesticus and is working on one for mealworms too). The FSA has issued a consultation about the proposal; the deadline for responses is 10 August.
Amusingly, the FSA confirms that the German cheese mite and flour mites are automatically considered legal because they were widely consumed before 1997. I think it’s safe to say that the likelihood of eating cheese mites in the UK is basically nil; as for flour mites, they are usually eaten unwittingly as residues (they’re a grain pest), so their inclusion in the green list is baffling when crickets or mealworms will have to jump through expensive - and extensive - bureaucratic hoops to get the same status.
As the Woven Network mentioned in their recent newsletter, “the consultation is only about whether it is a good thing to allow edible insects to be sold in GB prior to Novel Food approval. Hence any debate should only be regarding the safety of edible insects - ie the only reason Parliament could object.”
The FSA’s U-turn on legalising edible insects is welcome. Whilst it would have been great to see the FSA take Brexit as an opportunity to ditch the Novel Food framework altogether, most people agree that this ship has now sailed.
There is still room for manoeuvre however. The process for Novel Food applications is costly (tens of thousands of euros/pounds) and takes several years. An applicaton must also be filed for every insect product so it’s a really onerous process. Rather than demanding UK-specific applications, which are just doubling up the work done in the EU, the FSA should swallow its pride and mirror the work done by the European food safety watchdog EFSA. It was good enough until 18 months, surely it still is now.
In Other News
Graphic Story
This week’s Graphic Story is a tip-off by long-term Buzzing friend Conrad Heine. Conrad recently went to the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. The exhibition is unique: it is the world’s oldest open submission exhibition, which means that anyone can enter their work for consideration. Works can be in any medium and are usually displayed along works by “academicians” (established artists), making the exhibition a truly democratic mix. This year’s theme is climate so it’s really exciting to see insect protein being included – in neon sign to boot. The piece is by Simon The Last, and the next issue of Buzzing will feature an interview with him.
Sector News
🐄 Feeding insects to cattle could make meat and milk production more sustainable (The Conversation).
☘ Scotland’s Rural College is running a survey on the use of insect manure in food production; do take part, there are some great questions.
🐛 I love what French mealworm company Invers is doing, so it was great to see them featured on the big 8pm evening news on France’s TF1 channel.
Test Corner: Flavoured crickets from Entomo Farms
I picked these up when I visited Entomo Farms in Canada after Insects to Feed the World last month and I’ve been looking forward to trying them. A warm summer’s evening with a glass of bubbly and some friends felt like the perfet occasion to open all the packets at once and do a tasting (any excuse 😂).
For comparison’s sake, I tried the plain crickets along with my usual plain crickets from Instar Farming here in the UK. Entomo Farms actually farm banded crickets, whilst Instar Farming farm house crickets. They look pretty similar once they’ve been roasted, although I’d say that Entomo Farms’ crickets have a slightly stronger flavour than those from Instar Farming.
Amongst the flavoured crickets, the ranch flavoured crickets got the thumbs down. I thought the seasoning was overpowering. My friend quipped that it was like biting into a stock cube, which I thought was spot on.
The lime and chili ones were much nicer: I found that the seasoning was a still a bit too strong for my liking but it was very clearly a hit of lime, followed by the kick of chili. A great grown-up snack with drinks.
The clear winner was the honey mustard crickets however: the seasoning was subtle and elevated the crickets from perfectly OK in their plain state to really morish. There were a few left in the packet at the end of the night, which my little boy polished off the next day and declared “amazing”.
I did also try the cinnamon sugar ones, which basically tasted of cinnamon buns. What’s not to like?
