PhD candidate working on the economic and environmental stakes of alternative proteins.
Tom Bry-Chevalier
Karma: 76
Together with The Insect Institue, we have recently written several critical reviews of insect farming in terms of economic, environmental, consumer acceptability and waste recycling aspects.
Although we are not providing new data with these articles, we are compiling data from both the academic and industrial worlds to provide a critical view, which is still fairly rare. TII have 6 papers under review or accepted with minor or major revision.
All six preprints are now up and publicly available.
Have the environmental benefits of insect farming been overstated? A critical review : https://doi.org/10.32942/X2W60R
Beyond the buzz: A review of the prospects of replacing meat consumption with insect-based foods : https://doi.org/10.32942/X2RG89
Is turning food waste into insect feed an uphill climb? A review of persistent challenges : https://doi.org/10.32942/X2NG8C
Insect-based livestock feeds are unlikely to become economically viable in the near future : https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/fdbwg
Bugs in the system: The logic of insect farming research is flawed by unfounded assumptions : https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/7nmzj
Offshoring insect farms may jeopardise Europe’s food sovereignty : https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/6wq4f
Thank you Bob, Daniela and Abraham for this initiative! I hope you will succeed in raising the necessary funds.
A little anecdote to illustrate just how useful I think your work would be: For one of my forthcoming papers addressing the issue of insect farming, I had the opportunity to realise how few studies there are on the question of insect welfare, particularly in a farming context. The studies on the sentience or well-being of insects that exist to date have almost never looked at insects specifically used for food or feed (notably the black soldier fly and, to a lesser extent, the tenebrio molitor.) Similarly, there is very little data on what constitutes good or bad rearing conditions for the insects used and the least harmful ways of killing them, particularly in the light of the practices currently favoured by the industry.
tl;dr: I strongly agree there’s a huge data gap that would be extremely useful to address in an attempt to bring this issue to the attention of decision-makers.
Congratulations Corentin on the launch of the association. I’m delighted to have been able to work with you on these papers.
Thank you for your initiative! I’ve been hoping for a while to see this kind of organisation emerge, as it’s an issue that is becoming more and more worrying. For example, here in France, insect farming has been developing very rapidly for a few years, with two start-ups in particular having raised several hundred million euros and benefiting from strong government support.
If you are interested in the environmental aspect of insect farming, please feel free to contact me. I have done a lot of research into the scientific literature on the subject and have written several articles in the French media to temper the enthusiasm and promises made by the promoters of insect consumption, and I am currently writing a paper that will also address this issue.
Thank you very much for this article. I am a candidate for the Animalist Party in the upcoming legislative elections in France (although not very invested in the party otherwise) and took the liberty of sharing this article with other candidates having an affinity with EA. I have not yet taken the time to try to evaluate even roughly the impact of the Animalist Party in France, but I had the impression that during this presidential election, due to the decent score of the party in the European elections and the work of some associations (notably L214), the issue of animal welfare was much more discussed, with many candidates signing a charter of measures in favor of animals.
This being said, the format of legislative elections in France makes it very unlikely that a deputy from the animalist party will ever be elected, and perhaps limits our ability to negotiate with the other parties. In the European elections, on the other hand, we only need to obtain 5% to win a seat in parliament, which is much more attainable and has already been done by other animalist parties in Europe.
I think we’ll wait until we’ve had at least one or two papers published before making the big announcement, which shouldn’t be too long. I’ll discuss it with the people at TII who will make the decision (I contributed to 5 of those 6 papers, but I’m not affiliated to TII).