Conspiracy theorists are trying to influence European election campaigns with disinformation and lies. Much of the fabrication comes from Moscow, but plenty is homegrown.
If media campaigns in more than a dozen European countries were to be believed, the European Union (EU) intends to force citizens to eat insects instead of meat.
The claim has touched nerves, especially in Italy, where variations of it have been revived and splashed across billboards during European elections to pit Brussels against mama’s special sauce.
But consumers of this claim are being fed pure nonsense, an example of countless fabrications launched or adopted by candidates seeking political gain at the cost of the truth.
The fake insect-food narrative, which first surfaced last year in a number of EU countries, has proven so popular with malign actors both within and outside the bloc that they’ve brought it back for the European election cycle to try to discredit pro-EU candidates.
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But no one should be surprised that malignant actors want to impact Europe’s election cycle, with 720 seats up for grabs for the next five-year term in the European Parliament and many national elections taking place simultaneously as part of a record year for elections worldwide.
The EDMO reports a record-high amount of disinformation ahead of the vote about universally controversial issues like migration, agricultural policy and climate change, including even the resurrection of fake stories from years past, such as COVID-19 conspiracies.
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“Bugs are disgusting.” said the person tucking into crab pâté and lobster at an all-you-can-eat buffet.
“Too right.” agreed the person chowing down on a well-boiled haggis.
Funny, this is actually the second thread in the past couple of days where eating insects has come up for unrelated reasons. I’ll repeat what I said in the other thread on a few points:
We should be eating cricket flour. […] And if we got over the “ick” factor, our carb-filled food would be a lot healthier.
No, you won’t be picking legs out of your teeth.
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I’ve actually eaten insects when it’s clear that they’re insects. I once even bought some from a Thai grocery and cooked them myself just to see if I could. I’m not a great cook, so it wasn’t exactly a meal with four Michelin stars, but most of it wasn’t too bad. The longicorn beetle larvae tasted nutty and the ants tasted citrusy (I assume because of the formic acid). I didn’t like the giant water bug though. It did look like a massive cockroach, which didn’t help, but it also had a sort of juniper/gin flavor and I don’t like that flavor.
I’ve also had Oaxacan Mexican crickets in chili and lime. They used to sell them on street stalls near Dodger Stadium when I lived in L.A. Pretty good.
What’s funny is that people who don’t blink an eye at eating shrimp, crab or lobster can’t handle the idea of eating arthropods.
Insects can be farmed sustainably, they are high in protein and many other nutrients, and there’s really nothing wrong with their tastes unless you don’t like the same flavors in other foods.
There are plenty of amino-acids in plants, there’s no need for wasting resources on insects.
In reality, the subsidies meant for these invertebrate animal farms will be lead to more feed for the vertebrate animal farms, in the shape of “concentrated protein feed”.
You can feed insects on garbage. No resources will be wasted. You also don’t need to use pesticides or herbicides on insects.
I get that you don’t like the idea of eating insects, but that’s another issue. Farming them is sustainable and eating them is healthy.
Crickets Are Not a Free Lunch: Protein Capture from Scalable Organic Side-Streams via High-Density Populations of Acheta domesticus https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0118785
It has been suggested that the ecological impact of crickets as a source of dietary protein is less than conventional forms of livestock due to their comparatively efficient feed conversion and ability to consume organic side-streams. This study measured the biomass output and feed conversion ratios of house crickets (Acheta domesticus) reared on diets that varied in quality, ranging from grain-based to highly cellulosic diets. The measurements were made at a much greater population scale and density than any previously reported in the scientific literature. The biomass accumulation was strongly influenced by the quality of the diet (p<0.001), with the nitrogen (N) content, the ratio of N to acid detergent fiber (ADF) content, and the crude fat (CF) content (y=N/ADF+CF) explaining most of the variability between feed treatments (p = 0.02; R2 = 0.96). In addition, for populations of crickets that were able to survive to a harvestable size, the feed conversion ratios measured were higher (less efficient) than those reported from studies conducted at smaller scales and lower population densities. Compared to the industrial-scale production of chickens, crickets fed a poultry feed diet showed little improvement in protein conversion efficiency, a key metric in determining the ecological footprint of grain-based livestock protein. Crickets fed the solid filtrate from food waste processed at an industrial scale via enzymatic digestion were able to reach a harvestable size and achieve feed and protein efficiencies similar to that of chickens. However, crickets fed minimally-processed, municipal-scale food waste and diets composed largely of straw experienced >99% mortality without reaching a harvestable size. Therefore, the potential for A. domesticus to sustainably supplement the global protein supply, beyond what is currently produced via grain-fed chickens, will depend on capturing regionally scalable organic side-streams of relatively high-quality that are not currently being used for livestock production.
Could consumption of insects, cultured meat or imitation meat reduce global agricultural land use? https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211912417300056
Animal products, i.e. meat, milk and eggs, provide an important component in global diets, but livestock dominate agricultural land use by area and are a major source of greenhouse gases. Cultural and personal associations with animal product consumption create barriers to moderating consumption, and hence reduced environmental impacts. Here we review alternatives to conventional animal products, including cultured meat, imitation meat and insects (i.e. entomophagy), and explore the potential change in global agricultural land requirements associated with each alternative. Stylised transformative consumption scenarios where half of current conventional animal products are substituted to provide at least equal protein and calories are considered. The analysis also considers and compares the agricultural land area given shifts between conventional animal product consumption. The results suggest that imitation meat and insects have the highest land use efficiency, but the land use requirements are only slightly greater for eggs and poultry meat. The efficiency of insects and their ability to convert agricultural by-products and food waste into food, suggests further research into insect production is warranted. Cultured meat does not appear to offer substantial benefits over poultry meat or eggs, with similar conversion efficiency, but higher direct energy requirements. Comparison with the land use savings from reduced consumer waste, including over-consumption, suggests greater benefits could be achieved from alternative dietary transformations considered. We conclude that although a diet with lower rates of animal product consumption is likely to create the greatest reduction in agricultural land, a mix of smaller changes in consumer behaviour, such as replacing beef with chicken, reducing food waste and potentially introducing insects more commonly into diets, would also achieve land savings and a more sustainable food system.
Your first link talked about the problem being variability in how they are farmed, not that they are farmed.
Your second link says:
introducing insects more commonly into diets, would also achieve land savings and a more sustainable food system.
Did you even read it?
I didn’t go further than that if you’re not going to check your own links.
Yes, I read it. Plants are still the superior option. I was being generous for your middle ground position.
If you knew anything about animal farming, you’d know that “garbage” can mean a lot of things. This hope of waste feeding gets trickier with invertebrates who don’t regulate their own body temperature. I’m saying that you’re being excessively optimistic about it.
You were being “generous” by contradicting your own point.
That’s also known as being wrong.
I expect you to understand that some topics are more ambiguous, which means that there are more contradictory bits of information which are tied to different setups in context.
As the practice of raising these invertebrate animals is not happening at a large scale, the data for it is also weak and based on immature research. The ambiguity with decline over time, if there’s more research into this and it actually happens at a large scale.
In terms of food traditions, eating land insects is usually a luxury, which reflects the scarcity: https://www.finedininglovers.com/article/insect-delicacies-around-world The simple notion that “insect protein is cheap” is misleading.
Ma Laeng Tod (Thai street food- fried insects,) is delicious. The grub were like spicy-savory gummy bears.
As some one who’s perhaps too adventurous for their own good (I’ll eat almost anything, once.)… I find this whole idea that it’s going to be forced patently ludicrous. Even if there was a push towards it.
Italians, or at least Sardinians, already eat bugs. As expected, they make it into something delicious.
Casu martzu[1] (Sardinian: [ˈkazu ˈmaɾtsu]; lit. ‘rotten/putrid cheese’), sometimes spelled casu marzu, and also called casu modde, casu cundídu and casu fràzigu in Sardinian, is a traditional Sardinian sheep milk cheese that contains live insect larvae (maggots).
maggots in… cheese…
Eh. not the most disgusting method of fermentation I’ve heard about.
Never eat those maggots live, unlike mites they actually can fuck you up from the inside. Which isn’t the reason it’s outlawed though, that’s because Sardinians have no sanitary source for the maggots.
We should be eating cricket flour. […] And if we got over the “ick” factor, our carb-filled food would be a lot healthier.
The length people will go to, to not eat a goddamned legume.
Or… stick with me here… we could be eating both. Because insects both taste good and don’t taste like plants.
I’m vegan, so you won’t be seeing me after bug flour. But I would much prefer that It replaced the meat industry.
People are squeamish about eating insects but are okay with all the killing of cows, pigs, chickens and more, which is a very much nastier business.
Easier for them to ignore the suffering they cause than ignore that their food is different from what they’re used to.
You know, when i played cyberpunk i noticed they had pizza with authentic pepperoni beetles. I stopped my cyber terrorism to think about that. I was first taken aback about how it truly is a dystopian story. But now that i think about it… would i really care? I unironically like impossible burgers, not because it tastes just like beef, but it’s got that characteristics of a good burger, just a more exotic animal like kangaroo burgers. After the novelty of knowing its bug meat, i could see not thinking differently about it at all. More sustainable, cheaper, healthier, less animal cruelty, and good taste?
Now i know the current bug meat claims are a lie, but honestly… bring on the bugs!
But now that i think about it… would i really care?
Meanwhile, Takemura: “Anything that isn’t local?”
That’s not to say that you can’t make excellent food like that, it’s just that expecting culinary refinement from Night City’s food-chain is a bit of a stretch. Nestle meets American palate.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Meanwhile, Takemura: “Anything that isn’t local?”
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Honestly im surprised bugs aren’t a more popular food. Lots of places where they are boutique street food but haven’t seen anyone try to do it at high-volume. I bet you can make a spam-like product that isn’t too bad to eat and not really think about what exactly is in it.
They definitely sell insects at volume in some countries. In L.A. I was able to get prepackaged insects of several species at a Thai grocery.
Honestly, not knowing what’s in spam is why I don’t eat spam.
I’d rather crunch out on a grasshopper (or cricket, grub… those aren’t crunchy, though,) than eat spam
(I spent some time in Thailand and have had ma laeng tod. The, street food you mentioned)
It’s the ick factor. If you could puree grasshoppers and put something on the ingredients that didn’t make it sound like insects, and sell it cheaper than beef, then people would buy it.
South park had a similar point.
Cartman was all anti vegan food, untill he realized it was just the same hyperprocessed goop he was used to. Then he was all for it.
Part of it is our ingrained belief that insects are filthy (and a lot of them are, but so are a lot of animals we eat, specially how we treat them). Personally, I’d rather have cultivated meat if that’s viable in the future.
Like printed meat or a plant that grows meat adjacent flesh?
Like the thing where they grow meat from cells in a petri dish and they multiply in a tank. I think meat ‘3d printing’ is a way to do it, but there are others
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The fake insect-food narrative, which first surfaced last year in a number of EU countries, has proven so popular with malign actors both within and outside the bloc that they’ve brought it back for the European election cycle to try to discredit pro-EU candidates.
The EDMO reports a record-high amount of disinformation ahead of the vote about universally controversial issues like migration, agricultural policy and climate change, including even the resurrection of fake stories from years past, such as COVID-19 conspiracies.
Russia’s war in Ukraine has included information campaigns against Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy personally, which DW’s Fact Check unit has documented and debunked.
“For the current Kremlin leadership, this is an existential battle, and they clearly are trying to win it, not as much on the frontline as much as targeting the support from the West,” explained Janis Sarts, director of NATO’s Strategic Communications Center of Excellence in Riga.
“That’s why this political election year is so important for them to promote the narratives, the forces that would be ready to stop this support to Ukraine and undermine the European and transatlantic security.”
Former Latvian Deputy Prime Minister and EU lawmaker Artis Pabriks says people should not underestimate the European Parliament as an attractive target for political interference.
The original article contains 745 words, the summary contains 203 words. Saved 73%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
I really don’t get what’s up with the bug thing… Our foods are literally addictive and creating obesity. They’re full of all kinds of chemicals not proven safe, instead just ones not proven clearly dangerous
And the thought of bugs being part of this is too much? So much that it’s useful propaganda?
I really don’t get what’s up with the bug thing… Our foods are literally addictive and creating obesity. They’re full of all kinds of chemicals not proven safe, instead just ones not proven clearly dangerous
And the thought of bugs being part of this is too much? So much that it’s useful propaganda?
I don’t understand where the bug meat narrative is coming from, besides that it’s gross so it’s easy to use to incite fear and disgust any time imitation meat is brought up, when in reality it’s usually soy or vital wheat gluten based.
I’m against all animal exploitation, including bugs!
The EU approved some bugs under the novel foods regulation. In short, to place some ingredient on the market that didn’t get grandfathered in you have to jump some bureaucratic hurdles, some companies did that for some bugs, and the rightoids twisted it into a world-ending conspiracy.
All it means that they are legal to use as an ingredient in foodstuffs, still has to be labelled etc. as is usual.
It originates mostly from a post on the blog section of the WEF where the author advocates for consuming insects. The WEF blog is also where the “you’ll own nothing and be happy” quote and I think even the 15 minute city scare comes from.
It is interesting to consider where we draw the line of what we define as an ‘intelligent animal’…
Intelligence isn’t a good marker of moral value anyways 🤷
So you feel bad about slapping a mosquito? What about skipping a rock?
I’d punch a human trying to come up to me and draw my blood with a dirty needle as well.
And this may alarm you, but rocks are not, in fact, alive, or sentient in any manner (despite what pet rock enthusiasts want you to believe).
Removed by mod
see you on vegancirclejerk 😏
