Italy resists the taste for edible insects

In years past, while working as journalist in south-east Asia, I encountered many people for whom insects were a normal part of their diets.

I met Cambodians who caught and ate insects to survive the near starvation of the Khmer Rouge genocide. In Thailand’s lively night markets, street vendors sold deep-fried grasshoppers, crickets, worms and other bugs as snacks. I met a Thai entrepreneur whose start-up produced fried insects in modern, branded packaging for grocery stores.

But it wasn’t until Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni’s government began publicly railing about the urgent need to protect Italian consumers from the menace of “cricket flour” that I realised Europeans were also developing an appetite for edible insects.

This year, the EU’s food safety authority approved powdered cricket and lesser mealworm — two high-protein insects — for human consumption, after authorising the sale of dried mealworm and locusts as human food. These decisions have been met with derision by Meloni’s rightwing Brothers of Italy and its political allies; one of the party’s lawmaker called the moves “bordering on madness”.

Now, Meloni’s government, determined to protect Italy’s cherished culinary traditions from threats real and imagined, has struck back. It recently issued an edict requiring any insect-based product to be clearly labelled as such and be displayed on designated store shelves. Meloni herself called Italy a ‘food superpower’ whose traditions needed safeguarding.

“Insect products are arriving on supermarket shelves! Flour, larvae — good, delicious,” she said in a tone of disgust in a recent video. “But when a product contains insects . . . we tell citizens with a nice visible label so they can choose whether to eat insects or not.”

Edible insects aren’t the only novel food in Italy’s sights. Rome recently banned the production and sale of laboratory-grown meat — a move cheered by Italy’s agro-business lobby, though the EU has yet to approve any cultivated meat for sale.

Italian entrepreneurs Edoardo Imperato, 34, and Francesco Majno, 35, have observed the official fulminations against “cricket flour” with bemusement. They are co-founders of Small Giants, a start-up that sells insect-based snacks and flour, and the furore has shone an unexpected but welcome spotlight on their products.

“They did us a favour,” Majno says. “So many more people are now discussing this and trying to understand these innovations in the food market. It is good publicity.”

The pair’s interest in edible bugs as a sustainable protein source began a decade ago, after the Rome-based UN Food and Agriculture Organization published a landmark study about insects’ potential to improve human food and nutritional security without harming the environment.

Today, the millennial entrepreneurs from Milan are determined to make their “planet-positive” protein more palatable to squeamish European consumers. “Our philosophy is to normalise it,” Majno said.

Small Giants imports dried cricket powder from Vietnam and buffalo worm powder from the Netherlands, then sells the 100 per cent insect flour for consumers to mix in small quantities with other grain-based flours to boost the protein in pasta, pizza or other baked goods.

The six-year-old business, which has raised around €600,000 in start-up capital, also uses insect flours to make cracker snacks in flavours like tomato or rosemary and is launching an insect-based meat substitute soon.

Small Giants’ sales are still modest — around €15,000-€17,000 a month — although Majno says they are up notably from last year. Rome’s new rules are not a major worry, given the EU’s already strict labelling requirements. But Majno says the official disdain for edible insects has left a bad taste in his mouth.

“People have started talking about cricket flour, which a few years ago nobody knew about. For us, it’s way easier to market something that people know,” he said. “But if you are always linking this new food with health hazards . . . you are reinforcing misconception. We think it would be better to see this new sector as an opportunity, rather than a threat.”

amy.kazmin@ft.com