Insects are advancing to become a menu item on European dining tables after the block’s food safety regulator approved food worms as safe for human consumption.
Wednesday’s announcement means the larvae (actually beetle larvae) could soon be shredded and used as protein-rich flour to make pasta and bread, or consumed whole in stir-fries and other recipes. The next steps are to obtain marketing and labeling approvals and for the European Commission to sign the decision of the European Food Safety Authority.
The ruling provides for a rise for companies such as Micronutris, a French edible insect farm that submitted the application, and other startups, such as AgriProtein of South Africa, Protix based in the Netherlands, and another French company , Ynsect, which is building a new farm with production capacity of more than 100,000 tons of bugs per year.
The most important question, perhaps, is whether Europeans will want to eat insects (a popular snack in some areas of Asia and Latin America), even if they are ground into flour.
Giovanni Sogari, a researcher in social and consumer patterns at the University of Parma in Italy, said many might have difficulty at first. “There are cognitive reasons derived from our social and cultural experiences, the so-called‘ factor ’, that make the idea of eating insects repel many Europeans,” he said. “Over time and exposure, these attitudes can change.”