On Saturday, September 28, Dicke will organize a public event about eating insects. For human consumption, but also for livestock breeding, such as chickens. However, not everyone is happy with this vision of the future.
Chickens love fly larvae
Both Dicke and Van Loon are involved in the InsectFeed research project led by Wageningen University & Research. Here, the extent to which insects can play a role in animal feeding in the poultry industry was investigated. And is it ethically desirable. What will it become? Chickens love the fly larvae offered to them.
According to Dicke, almost all of the birds in the Dutch poultry industry are on a vegetarian diet, but they also naturally eat insects. Research shows that the welfare of chickens improves when insects are on the menu. According to Dicke, it’s also more sustainable than soy and corn, which are usually fed to animals: “We import soy mainly from South America. This creates a large climate footprint.”
Unethical
The idea that in the future we will mass-breed insects for livestock and humans is not a rosy idea for everyone. According to Van Loon, for example, large-scale insect breeding of chickens is not sustainable at all. These fly larvae must be kept constantly warm to continue growing.
He also believes that it is not ethically desirable to kill insects on a large scale for food. Especially because there is more and more scientific evidence of the complexity of insect behavior. In 2022, a joint study by British and Iranian scientists showed that insects can also experience pain (source Proceedings of the Royal Society B.).