Recently, I wrote a piece about how my family used to eat squirrels. The more I think about it, the more I tend to agree with my vegan friends, in that, once you're eating any kind of living creature, what's the difference? Why can't we all eat insects? Lots of folks around the world already do.
The Guardian offers the following:
Professor Arnold van Huis, an entomologist at Wageningen University in the Netherlands and the author of the UN paper, says eating insects has advantages."There is a meat crisis," he said. "The world population will grow from six billion now to nine billion by 2050 and we know people are consuming more meat. Twenty years ago the average was 20kg, it is now 50kg, and will be 80kg in 20 years. If we continue like this we will need another Earth."Van Huis is an enthusiast for eating insects but given his role as a consultant to the FAO, he can't be dismissed as a crank. "Most of the world already eats insects," he points out. "It is only in the western world that we don't. Psychologically we have a problem with it. I don't know why, as we eat shrimps, which are very comparable."The advantages of this diet include insects' high levels of protein, vitamin and mineral content. Van Huis's latest research, conducted with colleague Dennis Oonincx, shows that farming insects produces far less greenhouse gas than livestock. Breeding commonly eaten insects such as locusts, crickets and meal worms, emits 10 times less methane than livestock. The insects also produce 300 times less nitrous oxide, also a warming gas, and much less ammonia, a pollutant produced by pig and poultry farming.
Even with the evidence and my earlier assertion that once you're eating living creatures, it doesn't make a difference what they are, I'm still a bit unsatisfied with this article. There is an obvious piece missing from the discussion about class and access. So, is the UN recommending that all the poor folks eat locusts, while the rest of us cozy up to a nice big hunk of beef?
