Buzzing: On Western prejudices
Hello friends, how are you all keeping? I am back from holidays. It was great for the soul, but terrible for my mealworms. All my adult beetles died, as did many of my larvae, especially the smaller ones. I had put the kit in the fridge as recommended so I’m not sure what happened. I’m going to let a whole tray of larvae pupate to restart the process and take it from there. Oh the joys of being an amateur insect farmer!
This week in Buzzing:
On the pervasiveness of Western prejudices againt insects
In Other News: Millennial Salmon and lots of good news
Test Corner: Insect snack bars, Part two
On Wednesday morning, my husband was checking the headlines on BBC News when he saw a story involving my two favourite topics: edible insects and Madagascar. “Forced to eat insects in drought-hit Madagascar”, he read out.
I know about the drought: I reported on its impact in 2018. Southern Madagascar is in the grips of a devastating, multi-year drought and thousands of people are on the brink of starvation.
I’m glad that the topic is getting exposure in mainstream media but I was genuinely nonplussed by the choice of headline - insects are widely consumed in Madagascar - so I checked out the story later that day. The headline in question was on the BBC News website’s homepage, whilst the headline on the page was “Madagascar on the brink of climate change-induced famine”. The story highlighted the plight of families and how they were now reduced to eating cactus leaves and locusts.
I then found an almost identical story in the Independent - “Families forced to eat locusts as Madagascar famine deepens” – using the same quotes and case studies from the United Nations’ World Food Programme (WFP), which means the stories were most likely put together from material provided by WFP. This is common when time and resources in newsrooms are tight (there are not many reporters in Madagascar, it’s hard and expensive to get there, especially with Covid etc etc). I also found another very similar story dating back to April in Al-Jazeera, headlined “Starving Malagasy forced to eat leaves, locusts for survival”, again referencing WFP’s famine relief efforts in the area.
My concern with these stories is that they are suggesting that people are eating insects out of desperation. There is no doubt that people are desperate – I have seen it firsthand – but people in Madagascar did eat insects before the drought. It is this distortion that’s bothering me, especially since it appears to be construed by Western NGOs and/or media.
Interestingly, the day before I saw these stories, I spoke to Brian Fisher, an entomologist at the California Academy of Science. Brian is one of the founders of Valala Farms, Madagascar’s first cricket farm. They produce cricket powder, the bulk of which is used in famine relief programmes. The powder can be added to porridge or the sauces served with rice, and the powder has been popular amongst recipients and shown to be particularly beneficial to patients undergoing treatment for TB (which is toxic and requires a healthy weight).
Yet Brian told me that the biggest barrier Valala Farms has faced is overcoming the yuck factor of international famine relief organisations, who are not accustomed to edible insects and prefer ready-made therapeutic food products such as Plumpy’Nut.
I emailed Brian about the articles because I felt they resonated so much with what he’d said. To me, they speak volume about the pervasiveness of Western bias against edible insects, and the uphill struggle we face in overcoming it. We are clearly a long way off overcoming the yuck factor.
In Other News
Graphic Story
The name made me chuckle because Millennials get such a bad rap - but they are “generation change” and I suppose this is what this project is about. Millennial Salmon’s goal is “to create the most sustainable-farmed salmon using novel ingredients from the circular economy”, which includes insects. The four-year €1.3 million project is funded by the Research Council of Norway and involves French Black Soldier Fly company InnovaFeed.
Sector News
Let’s start with the big one: the EU finally approves the use of insect protein in poultry and pig feed (IPIFF).
The US’s National Science Foundation (NSF) has committed $2.25 million to support the new Center for Environmental Sustainability through Insect Farming (CEIF). It will also be funded through $1 million a year from 34 companies from the sector.
The International Finance Corporation (IFC), the investment arm of the World Bank, is looking for a consultant to study the insect-based feed market.
Two insect companies – Beta Hatch (US) and Hargol (Israel) - were amongst the winners at this year’s AgTech Awards.
Beta Hatch secures $10 million in new funding round (Private Equity Wire).
Test Corner: Insect snack bars, Part two
As promised, here is the second instalment of my insect snack bar taste test. Isaac and Kriket were reviewed in Part one.
Jimini’s
It’s a tale of two halves for these French bars: I liked the apple, cinnamon & caramel bar, and the apricot and almond one, but not the dark chocolate and fig, and even less the banana and dark chocolate. For starters, I couldn’t get the chocolate flavour (or bits) in either, and I found the fig bar a bit tough and uninteresting whilst the banana flavour in the other bar was overwhelming. In contrast, the other two bars had good, moist textures (the bars are date-based and cold-pressed) and balanced flavours. Both also had chunky bits of nuts for crunch.
95% of the ingredients in the bar are organic. I should add that the bars I bought from Earth + Me (UK-based) appear to be the older versions of the bars (except for the apricot & almond), which contained cricket powder. The new bars contain buffalo worm instead.
Guide price €2 per bar.
Rating: 8/10 for apple & caramel and apricot & almond, 6/10 for the fig bar and 5/10 for the banana bar.
Sens
I really wanted to like these bars but unfortunately, I didn’t. The issue for me is the flavourings: even though it’s all natural ingredients, I found them so strong they tasted almost artificial. It’s a real shame because these are high-quality bars: the list of ingredients is short, mostly organic and all natural. Sens even have their own cricket farm in Thailand for maximum traceability and sustainability.
I have only tried the fruit-flavoured bars (dark chocolate and sour cherry, dark chocolate and orange, pineapple and coconut, which all contain 6g of protein) but Sens also do two other bars, which contain 20g of protein and have different flavour profiles (peanut butter and cinnamon, bitter cocoa and sesame). Perhaps I’ll like these better. I also look forward to trying their pasta (which will soon feature in test corner).
Guide price €1.99 per bar.
Rating: 5/10
Conclusion
Overall, I was impressed with the quality of the snack bars: a lot of thought has clearly gone into their development, they are high-quality, made in small batches with good ingredients. This is not mass-market, ultra-processed territory.
I am not much of a snack bar person so I’m not sure I’ll necessarily buy them again (although if I do, Kriket will be top of my list). That said, I would highly recommend them to anyone considering trying insects for the first time: if nothing else, the bars are nutritious and it’ll get you over that first “hurdle”, but chances are that you will actually like them.
Note that I do not accept freebies and buy all the products reviewed here.
