Clinton Grants $1 Million To Edible Insect Farmers 277
An anonymous reader writes "Former US President Bill Clinton, through the Clinton Global Initiative, has awarded $1 million to a group of Canadian MBA students who are looking to solve urban hunger by feeding people insects. The students will use this as seed money for their start-up, Aspire Food Group, which aims to farm, produce, and sell edible insects as a way of solving world hunger, particularly in slums. Aspire says it will even work toward replacing livestock farms with insect farms in some areas." Insects as food aren't necessarily incompatible with conventional livestock, either.
Insect eating elitist-meme (Score:4, Interesting)
There's been a lot of this going around lately. From whence came the insect-eating meme? There's a woman I see in a coffee shop sometimes. She's an environmental activist, best known to me for manning the anti-GMO petition campaign in California, which failed. She mentioned eating insects that last time I saw her. I was like, OK... there's a meme going around, since environmental activists often rub shoulders with the same elite circles in which Clinton is involved.
The $64 trillion question is, "Can anybody trace the origin of the meme?". Yeah, people have been eating insects for thousands of years, and there have probably been much earlier suggestions that Westerners try it. I'm talking about a dramatic recent upswing though. What catalyzed it?
Re:Hey! (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Insect eating elitist-meme (Score:5, Interesting)
There is a long term trend towards sustainable farming practices. Cows take up vastly more land per lb of protein produced. The trend is to try and move primary protein source towards something more efficient, like sheep or chickens. But you don't get much more efficient than insects.
Conversion Rates of insects is better. (Score:5, Interesting)
Compared to cows, pigs and chickens some insects, especially in larva stage can convert plant cellulose and starches into proteins and fats many times more efficiently. This is the real benefit. In some cases this is more efficient than processing the plants for human consumption. Take corn as a feed, it is very inefficient for humans to ingest it but feed it to some insects and they will convert it at a very high rate.
We are not talking about insects being the equivalent to a Shmoo which reproduces asexually and only consumes air, but it makes sense to add them to agriculture. What I do not like is the premise that it could feed the poor, however they may be on to something with this approach also. During the second world war when the Nazis used slave labour from concentration camps they fed the slave on potato peels and vegetable top waste from the soldiers mess kitchens. When the SS doctors suddenly realized that the slaves that were there to be worked to death were actually getting to be healthier than the soldiers the practice was stopped and the slaves were then put on a deliberate starvation diet.
Just maybe our opulent fat diet of animal proteins and refined starches will make the rich who can afford it less healthy than the insect eating peons and lower class workers in the city slums.
Re:Hey! (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes. The steer is likely able to understand it has a future and feel pain as you do, and much of everything else we expect of mammals. The grasshopper not at all.
I know you were trying to be funny, but this meat eater thinks you are being quite foolish. There ethical implications to eating meat, the biggest one right now being how terribly those animals are treated.
Re:Yecch! (Score:3, Interesting)
The general tendency, somewhat magnified recently, of government to tell us that for our own good (obesity, for the good of the planet, whatever is the issue of the day) we must modify our behavior, when our leaders have no intention of following suit [capitolcommentary.com]. [1] The thought process appears to be, we should ride bicycles so there's plenty of gas for our leaders' armored SUVs. We should eat grasshoppers so there's plenty of steak for our leaders. And we should all reduce our energy consumption so our leaders can splurge [cbsnews.com].
Mind you, I've not had meat (except for fish) since the 1970's, my home is partially solar powered (with more to come as I can afford it) and my transportation gets substantially better gas mileage than a Prius. These efforts are worth while. What supremely annoys me is our fearless leaders telling us to cut back when they themselves have no such intention of doing so, except for the occasional photo op.
[1] Yes, Bill Clinton is the exception, being mostly vegan. (He admits to occasionally eating eggs and fish.) In his case, I think it was the triple bypass that decided him, rather than any particular concern about the planet, but he still deserves credit for the decision.