Nobody Is Going to Eat Insects After All
The long-awaited boom in entomophagy never arrives: neither humans nor livestock want insects. Cost data, plant closures and cultural resistance tell the story.
English · Original discussion in Spanish · Published
Nobody Is Going to Eat Insects: The Failure of the Great Food Promise
The dream of insect protein is fading. Even though the EU approved the use of the yellow mealworm back in 2021, the market has flatly rejected it. Neither as human food nor as animal feed: plants are closing and consumers won't swallow it. The question is whether this failure is definitive or just one battle in a longer war.
The cultural barrier: the disgust factor
The main obstacle is not technical but aesthetic. The first attempts to sell whole larvae failed because of their appearance. The strategy then shifted to insect flour, on the assumption that "what the eye doesn't see, the heart doesn't grieve over." But even that didn't work: the reception in supermarkets has been negligible. An illustrative anecdote: the ostrich-farming craze of decades ago, which promised exotic meat and ended in ruin due to unsustainable costs (barely 35 kg of meat per 100 kg of animal). The parallel is obvious.
Costs that don't add up
The economic analysis doesn't help either. Comparing the price of soy protein isolate (the benchmark on Alibaba and other wholesalers) with insect powder, the advantage disappears. Production requires feeding the insects, and by-products such as fertilizer don't cover the costs. Flagship plants, like the giant facility in France, have closed. In Spain, the facilities in Albacete and Salamanca survive on subsidies, not on real demand.
The institutional route: push or desperation?
The Spanish government has created a vocational training qualification in insect farming, which suggests a long-term bet. But skepticism is widespread: it is seen as a way of creating a legal framework to normalize what the market rejects. Meanwhile, consumers hold a red line: we don't want insects on our plate, visible or invisible.
The question hanging in the air is whether a potential supply shock (a shortage of conventional protein) could force the change. For now, the data is stubborn: nobody is going to eat insects.
Related discussions in the forum
The dream of insect protein is fading. Even though the EU approved the use of the yellow mealworm back in 2021, the market has flatly rejected it. Neither as human food nor as animal feed: plants are closing and consumers won't swallow it. The question is whether this failure is definitive or just one battle in a longer war.
The cultural barrier: the disgust factor
The main obstacle is not technical but aesthetic. The first attempts to sell whole larvae failed because of their appearance. The strategy then shifted to insect flour, on the assumption that "what the eye doesn't see, the heart doesn't grieve over." But even that didn't work: the reception in supermarkets has been negligible. An illustrative anecdote: the ostrich-farming craze of decades ago, which promised exotic meat and ended in ruin due to unsustainable costs (barely 35 kg of meat per 100 kg of animal). The parallel is obvious.
Costs that don't add up
The economic analysis doesn't help either. Comparing the price of soy protein isolate (the benchmark on Alibaba and other wholesalers) with insect powder, the advantage disappears. Production requires feeding the insects, and by-products such as fertilizer don't cover the costs. Flagship plants, like the giant facility in France, have closed. In Spain, the facilities in Albacete and Salamanca survive on subsidies, not on real demand.
The institutional route: push or desperation?
The Spanish government has created a vocational training qualification in insect farming, which suggests a long-term bet. But skepticism is widespread: it is seen as a way of creating a legal framework to normalize what the market rejects. Meanwhile, consumers hold a red line: we don't want insects on our plate, visible or invisible.
The question hanging in the air is whether a potential supply shock (a shortage of conventional protein) could force the change. For now, the data is stubborn: nobody is going to eat insects.
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Summary of a discussion on Burbuja.info - Foro de economía, actualidad y política., translated from Spanish and reviewed before publication. Read the full discussion (19 replies).
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