Bug burger anyone?
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 19 October 2021
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Is the Western diet ready for farmed insects in food? Although insects are consumed by more than two billion people worldwide, acceptance of them in the Western diet is still low, but could that be changing? With climate change, a growing population and an increased demand for protein all putting pressure on our food system, insects offer an interesting and more planet friendly alternative to meat and fish. Malena Sigurgeirsdottir is the co-founder of Hey Planet which has just launched a meat substitute using buffalo beetle powder (that's the lesser mealworm or Alphitobius Diaperinus), in Denmark, Germany and Sweden. She tells us how great insects taste, especially when they're ground up. Professor Matan Shelomi, from National Taiwan University, Department of Entomology outlines how farming insects can have a much lower carbon foot-print than farming animals. Meanwhile in the UK, Kieran Olivares Whittaker has received millions of dollars in funding for his Entocycle project, researching the optimum way to farm black soldier fly larvae to feed fish and poultry instead of using soy and fishmeal which causes deforestation and overfishing. And we meet Aly Moore of Bugible who makes a living from eating and promoting bugs as a source of protein. Produced and presented by Clare Williamson. (Image credit: HeyPlanet burger; Credit: Hey-Planet.com)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Claire Williamson, and on today's Business Daily, we're visiting the UK's leading insect farm. |
| 0:11.9 | Breeding black soldier flies to make feed for fish and livestock and help save the planet. |
| 0:17.3 | With a massive growing middle class globally and a massive growing protein requirement, we have two options. |
| 0:23.5 | We either dredge our oceans faster and cut down the rainforests quicker or we look up sustainable |
| 0:27.9 | alternatives. |
| 0:29.1 | And so insects are just a natural part of animals' diets, and I would argue humans' diets. |
| 0:33.7 | And the Danish start-up making sustainable meat from beetles. |
| 0:37.4 | Is it a hard sell? |
| 0:38.7 | You want to focus on taste and sustainability and the nutrition of this meat. |
| 0:43.4 | And then it should just be a little side information |
| 0:46.7 | that is actually made of powder from these buffalo beetles. |
| 0:50.2 | Are we at a turning point for edible insects? |
| 0:53.1 | That's the question we're asking here on Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 1:01.2 | That's the sound of a train rumbling overhead as it pulls into London Bridge Station. |
| 1:06.2 | I'm here at the headquarters of Entocicle, |
| 1:08.6 | whose offices and laboratories are under a couple of Victorian |
| 1:11.3 | railway arches, just a stones throw away from London's tallest building, the shard. |
| 1:16.5 | It's the unlikely home of a new type of farming that has the lofty goal of revolutionising the |
| 1:21.6 | global food chain. I'm here to meet the founder and CEO of Entocycle, Kieran Whitaker. |
| 1:28.1 | And if you didn't guess it already, Entocycle comes from entomology, which is the study of insects. |
| 1:38.7 | Hi, I'm here to see Kieran Whitaker. |
| 1:41.7 | It was in 2013 that the UN's food agency first highlighted the role |
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