[Hoasi]

> I think this is a weird wording. I dont think you need to limit the ick factor to "Westerners" There are an awful lot of people out there who would feel the "ick" factor.

Of course, this has nothing to do with “Westerners.” No one in their right mind would want farm animals to be fed insect powder. The fact that the company was allowed to operate and to receive massive funding is the real issue here.

[317070]

Well, chickens tend to live off insects when you let them roam.

I don't really see how insect powder would be worse than the flour they get now. You don't even need to turn the bugs into a powder.

[shtzvhdx]

To be fair, chickens can see and discriminate between insects before putting them in their mouths. Powdered insects preclude that.

Likewise, cows would never eat a carcass cow, but as hamburger mixed with a lot of grass...

[ErroneousBosh]

> To be fair, chickens can see (insects)

Yes, they do that

> and discriminate between insects

Yeah, they do not do that.

They also eat mice, which I guess came as quite a surprise to the cat that was stalking the mouse, although not half as much as to the mouse.

[pajko]

Chickens eat anything they can. Sometimes including eggs and chicks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannibalism_in_poultry

[fc417fc802]

Indeed we already feed them insects and we don't powder them. You can purchase bags of dried meal worms at the feed store. The carcasses are fully intact.

[close04]

For the longest time industrial and domestic livestock raising used to involve feed that included literally anything the animal would it. Free range birds today regularly eat worms and insects. Pigs were used as a sort of waste disposal system for anything they could digest, leading to a lot of health issues. Still nobody really cared beyond “I’ll cook it until it doesn’t kill me”, not the producers, not the consumers.

[its-summertime]

> No one in their right mind would want farm animals to be fed insect powder.

Why?

[ErroneousBosh]

There aren't really any farm animals that eat insects. Mostly they eat tough grasses and plants, the kind of things that we can't eat.

[Yokohiii]

I am pretty sure most people don't care how their steak made it's on their table.

[shtzvhdx]

I think most people do care if it weren't very difficult, even illegal, to find out.

[Der_Einzige]

There's a famous video of a bunch of kids seeing the nasty, vile process of creating chicken nuggets in front of them. At the end of the nasty process, the chicken nuggets are made and presented in front of the kids. After asking, "Who wants chicken nuggets?" all hands go up instantly.

No, actually showing how the sausage is made does NOT stop people from wanting it. I honestly think that people like knowing how fake/cruel things are! People want the comically fake look and taste. See Mar-a-Lago face and its popularity. Hopefully AI or something can "engineer the human spirit" away from this horrible tendency.

Related, Asians seem to love to take westerners absolute worst food and act like it's okay despite being absolute "food divas" otherwise. Asians (in their own countries) will unironically eat kraft singles on their ramen and use spam everywhere, while simultaneously gloating that "they only go out to eat for food that's hard to make at home" and lamenting about how disgusting fast food is.

You won't win anything by trying to show people how gross food is. You think bugs are gross to people? Remember fear factor?

[shtzvhdx]

Thats was Jamie Oliver, right?

I really don't concede the point. Kids see food they aren't accustomed to eating blended together and fed to them by people they trust (Oliver is a celebrity in the UK).

What they aren't seeing is the chicken eggs they're eating was laid by a hen that was shat on by the chicken above it while sitting on a bed made of the cadaver of the chicken that held the pen before it.

[trimbo]

Steak is the meat that people pay the most attention to in this regard! People will pay hundreds of dollars for a few ounces of steak solely based on how the cow was raised and fed.

For steak, I disagree with the article about stigma of eating bugs. Feeding cows bugs will save money, no doubt, and that might help cost on the low end of the beef market. Steak is a different thing though. A "bug-raised, bug-finished" steak would have to be incredible to overcome the stigma.

[collingreen]

Comparing high end, connoisseur based food like wagyu to the plastic wrapped supermarket meat most folks buy day to day isn't a good comparison. Both things exist; there isn't only one way people think (or don't think) about their food in this way.

Similarly with whisky - some folks care deeply some of the time about a particular whisky made by a particular distillery in a particular way in a particular place. This is fun and interesting and there is a lot to appreciate there. That doesn't mean there isnt a massive market for "well" whisky or the flavored ones where they mix up all the lower quality whisky they can get their hands on in bulk then add cinnamon or peanut butter syrup to it until people drink it again.

In the same way people generally don't LIKE the conditions of food animals it doesn't prevent their purchase, especially if it reduces cost or increases availability.

[Yokohiii]

There are probably a fair share of people that care. But I said "most" and stand by it. Maybe you are american? Around here we don't ask how the cattle was fed, maybe in high end restaurants and markets, but that is obviously a minority.