“Eating Bugs”

Entomo Farms in Peterborough is noisy, but you can still hear crickets.

They’re not pests the farm intends to whack out with pesticides — these orthoptera insects are its entire business, and, on any given day, around 100 million crickets call Entomo their home — at least until they end up on dinner plates.

Entomo is one of the largest edible bug farms in North America, producing everything from cricket powder and flour to barbecue-flavoured whole roasted crickets and mealworms.

Of course the UN is all for it – “Edible insects: Future prospects for food and feed security”

After exploding on to the scene as the next big thing in food, the plant-based meat trend has come back down to earth of late as consumers and investors discover that, behind all the sizzle, there’s not a lot of steak.

The poster child for the trend is Beyond Meat, the meat alternative company whose highly touted IPO in 2019 saw it more than double in value on its first day.

The business case was simple: For economic, environmental and health reasons, people around the world would soon decide to eat less meat, and instead consume plant-based proteins.

Last winter, as the prospect of yet another forced isolation loomed, the lines of queues snaked around the block. I couldn’t tell what they were for, at first. But every one of these queues led to the door of a butchers, and there, in the freezing fog, the stoicism and patience of the queuers told its own story. Meat matters.