Bugs Benedict? Bee Stroganoff?
An entomologist has seen the future of food, and – surprise! – it’s not what or where you might think it would be. “The Netherlands,” exclaims the professor, “wants to be in the forefront of food.”
By “forefront,” he’s talking about waaay out there – all the way to buffalo worms, locusts, caterpillars, crickets, and other insects for human consumption. Just as the American West had its cowboys, this new food world will have bug boys wrangling great herds of crawling and squirming critters to market. A ranch of creepers and crawlers might not have quite the same romantic appeal as a cattle ranch, but the bugs are said to pack a protein punch that is healthier than steak and far lighter on the environment. So let’s all gather around the campfire and sing: “Oh give me a home, where buffalo worms roam, and the crickets and caterpillars play!”
Insect edibles are already a common source of protein in Japan, Mexico, Africa, and elsewhere and are now appearing in Dutch supermarkets and restaurants. Thinking big, a group of insect breeders and farmers has formed a trade group to promote the product and help set health standards for raising and selling it.
There is, however, the “ugh” factor. To help overcome this, a major Dutch supermarket recently offered a sampling of such items as mealworms in chocolate, “Bug Nuggets,” and crispy whole crickets for snacking. As the entomologist put it, the Europeans’ instinctive rejection of biting into a bug is “an acquired abhorrence,” adding that “children have no problem eating them.” It’ll only take four or five years for consumers to buy into the insect future, he predicts: “It’s all in the mind.”
Plus, this shift can be a big boon for our environment. If bug cuisine catches on, instead of people spraying their yards and gardens with assorted doses of pesticides, they can just reach for cooking oil!
Tea Party Toys With Consumer Protection
In assessing today’s politics and public policy, it’s always helpful to reflect back on previous experiences in our nation’s long history – way back to, say, 2007.
It seems so long ago, doesn’t it? But you might remember it as “the year of the recall.” Four summers ago, millions of toys, cribs, and other products made in China had to be pulled from store shelves by Mattel and other marketers because they contained lead, toxic paint, or other dangers. Public outrage forced a big bipartisan majority of lawmakers in 2008 to beef up the staffing and enforcement authority of the then-dormant Consumer Product Safety Commission. Congress gave a strong and clear mandate to CPSC to protect our children from being poisoned or maimed by these products.
How’s that working out, you ask? Well, that was then, and now it’s another story. Emboldened by demands from tea party Republicans that Congress reduce “big government,” toy industry lobbyists are crying that the safety commission’s new rules are too intrusive, too costly, too onerous … too much. In particular, the industry wants to kill a public database that CPSC set up so consumers themselves can report any product hazards they find and can search for injury reports on a particular product before buying it.
This is an effective, low-cost way of policing product safety because it directly empowers us consumers in the marketplace. Of course, the corporate powers hate that. So, sure enough, one of the newly minted tea party Republicans, Mike Pompeo of Kansas, rushed to soothe the fevered brow of the corporate interests. His amendment in the House cuts all of the funding ($3 million this year) for our consumer database.
So, in keeping with today’s politically correct ideology, the toy boys get small government, and children get small protection.
This article appears in April 29 • 2011.