As I walked up the stairs in New York’s ornate Explorers Club, I was greeted by a man with a tarantula in his hand. I was at the venue for an event exploring the way insects and other bugs can curb emissions in food chains and boost food security. But the tarantula was very much alive. So was the scorpion on the table and some other creepy things that were part of the invertebrate “petting zoo”. At that point, I crept over to the bar — slowly to avoid alerting the spider — to calm my nerves.
This might sound like a gimmicky event. But as I report today, advocates of bug eating believe it offers a reliable source of nutrition with a fraction of conventional meat’s environmental impact. And there is evidence that investors are starting to see the commercial appeal of mass produced insects for animal and human food. — Patrick Temple-West
ALTERNATIVE PROTEIN
Edible insects: A fad or a solution to food security?
On Thursday, Americans took off from work to celebrate a truly US holiday — one that primarily involves eating.
With food on my mind this week, I got a taste of a potential new culinary avenue while sampling crickets and ants at a presentation by chef Joseph Yoon, who founded Brooklyn Bugs in 2017. His goal is to popularise edible insects and build up this food source to help support global food security. He has become a bit of a celebrity chef in the culinary world. (Check out Yoon’s interview with conservative talk show host Tucker Carlson from earlier this year.)
Yoon is a chef advocate for the UN’s International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). And he was also the culinary adviser for Nasa’s Deep Space Food Challenge in 2022.
Yoon argued that insects can be fed to animals, fish, pets and of course, humans. He added that easing off a meat-based diet — for one day a week — can trim carbon emissions. Livestock emits about 5 per cent of total greenhouse gas emissions, and that rises to 14.5 per cent when feed production, transport and other factors are taken into account, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. Research has shown that edible insect production is far less carbon intensive than pig or cattle farming.
Yoon acknowledged that his biggest challenge is overcoming the stigma around eating insects. Lobsters and crabs are delicacies, he argued, and we already eat large quantities of honey, which he describes as “insect regurgitation”.
But he is also fighting against a corporate food industry that has made conventional meat a cornerstone of diets around the world. When he was in Thailand, Yoon said, he was hoping to find local knowledge about insect preparation. Instead, locals shrugged and said insects are sold to tourists for a lark and are not eaten locally.
One of the major questions for the insect protein industry is whether it can be scaled to compete with the big alternative protein producers such as Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat. But some companies in this space are starting to attract substantial investment.
Ynsect, a French business that grows molitor and buffalo beetle mealworms used in pet food, fish feed and fertiliser, raised €160mn this year, making it one of the biggest agritech start-ups outside the US. Founded in 2011, Ynsect has expanded and earlier this year it launched a new pet food made from mealworms. Our colleague Victor Mallet recently visited Ynsect’s Dole factory in eastern France.
Meanwhile InnovaFeed, another France-based insect producer, raised $250mn from the Qatar Investment Authority among others.
By now, you are surely wondering: what does it taste like? Yoon’s samplings included fried cicadas and cricket kimchi. I’m not much of a foodie so I didn’t notice any jarring flavours or textures. An informal survey of the guests in attendance indicated the insects “taste like chicken”.
Yoon’s offerings are definitely aimed at a haute foodie type. These dishes won’t be mass produced for McDonald’s any time soon.
But his dishes are an appetiser of sorts for a deadly serious problem. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the world has increasingly focused on food security. If insects can be mass produced for human consumption or sustainable livestock, then these little critters could help feed the world and blunt global warming at the same time. (Patrick Temple-West)
Global tax reform
UN votes to reform global tax rules, setting up clash with OECD
Discussions over the reform of the global tax system caused a visible clash between developing and rich countries at the UN this week.
Following a series of tense negotiations, the second committee of the UN General Assembly, which handles economic and financial issues, voted on Wednesday to support a resolution to kick-start the reform, which could potentially shift decision-making on global tax from the OECD (a club of predominantly wealthier nations) to the UN. The committee voted overwhelmingly to back the African-led proposal, with 125 member states voting in favour, 48 against and nine abstaining.
Developing nations supporting the resolution stressed that the need for development aid would fall if the global tax system were fairer. “African people are tired of numbers about assistance for development,” Mezang Akamba, minister plenipotentiary and first counsellor of Cameroon’s mission to the UN, said.
“They do not request more assistance. They request every partner running a business, be it physical or digital individuals and companies, making profits to pay . . . a fair and just percentage in terms of tax,” he stressed.
Each year, $480bn of global tax revenues are lost to cross-border tax abuse as a result of profit moving within multinational corporations and wealthy individuals holding assets in offshore havens, according to Tax Justice Network, an international tax fairness advocacy group.
While the majority of tax losses are suffered by wealthy countries, the implications are bigger in developing nations. Losses for those countries equal almost half their collective public health budget, compared with 9 per cent for wealthy countries.
Under the adopted resolution, a committee would be created to set up the plan for the framework convention by August 2024, and only then would talks be able to begin.
However, rich economies such as the US, the UK and EU opposed the text, saying that it would duplicate ongoing efforts at the OECD. An EU official told Moral Money that creating a framework convention as proposed in the resolution could lead to “inconsistent outcomes that would create loopholes resulting in possible tax avoidance.”
“It is a red herring to speak of duplication,” South Africa’s UN ambassador Mathu Joyini argued, explaining that other efforts could easily be incorporated into global tax negotiations at the UN.
The overwhelming support for this proposal serves as a warning for wealthy nations. “This is a powerful moment for countries of the global south. They have come together . . . to challenge a century-old tradition of their exclusion from rule-setting power in this area,” Alex Cobham, chief executive of Tax Justice Network, told me.
“The OECD countries need to take a long, hard look at themselves,” he said. The global south countries could negotiate among themselves, allowing for the “prospect of significant new standards and a powerful new approach to international tax rules emerging, with or without the OECD,” he warned. (Kaori Yoshida, Nikkei)
Smart read
Dutch plans to reduce the growth of Schiphol airport in Amsterdam are a proxy for the debate over the future of the airline industry, writes our colleague Peggy Hollinger.
Read the full article here