Eat the Beetles!: An Exploration into Our Conflicted Relationship with Insects
Page 31
Waltner-Toews, David. 2008. Food, Sex, and Salmonella: Why Our Food Is Making Us Sick. Vancouver, BC: Greystone.
Waltner-Toews, David, James J. Kay, and Nina-Marie E. Lister. 2008. The Ecosystem Approach. New York: Columbia University Press.
Webster, Timothy H., William C. McGrew, Linda F. Marchant, Charlotte L.R. Payne, and Kevin D. Hunt. 2014. “Selective Insectivory at Toro-Semliki, Uganda: Comparative Analyses Suggest No ‘Savanna’ Chimpanzee Pattern.” Journal of Human Evolution. 71: 20–27.
Winston, Mark L. 2014. Bee Time: Lessons from the Hive. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Wrightson, Kendall. 1999. “An Introduction to Acoustic Ecology.” Soundscape 1:10–13.
Xu, Lijia, Huimin Pan, Qifang Lei, Wei Xiao, Yong Peng, and Peigen Xiao. 2013. “Insect Tea, a Wonderful Work in the Chinese Tea Culture.” Food Research International 53:629–635.
Yates-Doerr, Emily. 2015. “The World in a Box? Food Security, Edible Insects, and ‘One World, One Health’ Collaboration.” Social Science & Medicine 129:106–112.
Yen, A.L. 2012. “Edible Insects and Management of Country.” Ecological Management & Restoration 13(1):97–99.
ENDNOTES
NOTE: Authors and dates referred to in these notes are in the Selected Bibliography.
CRICKET TO RIDE: AN INTRODUCTION
1 — van Huis et al. 2013. Edible Insects: Future Prospects for Food and Feed Security.
2 — The term brood refers to the young, which in the case of bees, hornets, and wasps means the larvae. Sometimes these are eaten together with the comb in which they are reared, and sometimes they are extracted from the comb and eaten separately.
3 — “Bugs in the System,” The Economist (September 16, 2014). http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21620560-merits-and-challenges-turning-bugs-food-insect-mix-and-health
4 — Protein concentrates in feeds for chickens, farmed fish, and other livestock are often made up of “fishmeal,” a euphemism for anchovies, pillaged from the ocean off the coast of Peru and then ground up in a messy industrial system. Soybeans, once enthusiastically proposed as an environmentally friendly alternative to meat, and then used as a protein concentrate in animal feeds, are now grown on cleared rainforest lands in Brazil.
5 — Until 2015, Entomo Farms was called Next Millennium Farms. This was their name when I first visited them. In order to avoid confusion, I shall refer to them as Entomo Farms throughout this book. The change of name reflects the changing fortunes of insect-eating in North American culture.
6 — This definition is from Charles Doyle, A Dictionary of Marketing, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). Christensen himself now prefers the term disruptive innovation. See http://www.claytonchristensen.com/key-concepts/
7 — For spelling the common name of insects in this book, I have tried to follow the recommendations of the Entomological Society of America, which uses two words for honey bees, despite the common usage of running them together. The latter, they assert, is the equivalent of using Johnsmith, rather than John Smith. For more on this, see the database of common names of insects at http://entsoc.org/common-names
8 — Haldane’s original and oft-repeated quote is that life is “not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose,” his use of the word queer for “strange” in this context being an illustration of the changing complexities of language and culture.
9 — van Huis, 2014. “The Global Impact of Insects.”
10 — van Huis et al., 2013. Edible Insects: Future Prospects for Food and Feed Security.
PART I. MEET THE BEETLES!
11 — Yen, 2012. “Edible Insects and Management of Country.”
12 — Lockwood, 2011. “Ontology of Biological Groups.”
13 — To remember this classification system, they often use a mnemonic such as Dear King Phillip Came Over From Great Spain (or For Great Sex, or For Great Spaghetti, or one of those other S words).
14 — Cifuentes-Ruiz et al., 2014. “Preliminary Phylogenetic Analysis.”
15 — For instance, an FDA handbook on foodborne pathogenic microorganisms and natural toxins is titled The Bad Bug Book. See http://www.fda.gov/Food/FoodborneIllnessContaminants/CausesOfIllnessBadBugBook/
16 — See entomofarms.com
17 — Bill Holm, Boxelder Bug Variations: A Meditation on an Idea in Music and Language (Minneapolis, MN: Milkweed Editions, 1985).
18 — Durst et al., 2010. Forest Insects as Food.
19 — Bukkens, 1992. “The Nutritional Value of Edible Insects.”
20 — Ramos-Elorduy et al., 2012. “Could Grasshoppers Be a Nutritive Meal?”
21 — Payne et al., 2015. “Are Edible Insects More or Less ‘Healthy’ Than Commonly Consumed Meats?”
22 — Cited in Durst et al., 2010. Forest Insects as Food.
23 — Nowak et al., 2016. “Review of Food Composition Data for Edible Insects.”
24 — In South Africa, de-gutting mopane worms has been described as being like squeezing the contents out of a tube of toothpaste.
25 — Payne et al, “Nutrient Composition Data.”
26 — “How Eating Insects Could Help Climate Change,” BBC News (December 11, 2015). http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-35061609
27 — Paoletti et al, 2007.
28 — Although they look like beetles, they are, like all cockroaches, in the order Blattodea, along with termites.
29 — Taking this work a step further, in 2016 Natasha Grimard, a seventeen-year-old Canadian student, proposed that insect-fortified foods could be used to enhance the nutritional status of people in refugee camps, and created foods that would be culturally appropriate. The following year, she received a prestigious national award for innovation. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCCytkR-YqE
30 — “How Eating Insects Empowers Women,” Motherboard (April 18, 2016). http://motherboard.vice.com/read/how-eating-insects-empowers-women
31 — Lundy and Parella, “Not a Free Lunch.”
32 — Reports comparing FCR for crickets to other species are strongly contested by insect farmers. My point is that the advantages are not always as clear as one might think.
33 — Bajželj et al, “Importance of Food-Demand Management.”
34 — See Livestock’s Long Shadow, for instance, an FAO report published in 2006 and available online.
35 — I mentioned this interview earlier, when discussing chitinase (http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-35061609).
36 — For a fuller discussion of some of the challenges, strategies, and options, see David Waltner-Toews, Ecosystem Sustainability and Health (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004) and David Waltner-Toews, James J. Kay, and Nina-Marie E. Lister, The Ecosystem Approach (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008).
37 — J. Fernquest, “Eating Insects: Sudden Popularity,” Bangkok Post (May 31, 2013). http://www.bangkokpost.com/learning/learning-news/352836/eating-insects-sudden-popularity
PART II. YESTERDAY AND TODAY: INSECTS AND THE ORIGINS OF THE MODERN WORLD
38 — The idea that the earth’s tectonic plates moved was first proposed by Alfred Wegener early in the twentieth century. Wegener was ridiculed by fellow scientists for suggesting this — until he was proven correct in the 1950s, after he had died.
39 — In this insectoid tradition, I composed a song and performed it at a folk festival in 1970. The lovely young woman for whom it was written subsequently agreed to marry me. I know it’s association, not causation, but still . . .
40 — Webster et al., 2014. “Selective Insectivory at Toro-Semliki Uganda.”
41 — W. Bostwick, “Boiled Alive: Turning Bees into Mead,” Food Republic (September 20, 2011). http://www.foodrepublic.com/2011/09/20/boiled-alive-turning-bees-into-mead/
42 — In this book, I have used tons
to refer to both the American weight (2,000 pounds) and the international metric weight (1,000 kilograms or 2,200 pounds). Because the production figures on insects and insect products are estimates, and most are increasing, this difference does not alter the general arguments I am making.
43 — Crittenden, 2011. “The Importance of Honey Consumption in Human Evolution.”
44 — Flannery, 2010. Here on Earth: A Natural History of the Planet.
45 — Latin for foolish, but then, you knew that already.
46 — Difficulty in degrading lignocellulose is one of the big challenges facing the twenty-first-century biofuel industry.
47 — See http://michaelpollan.com/reviews/how-to-eat/
48 — Berenbaum, 1994. Bugs in the System.
49 — See www.unspunhoney.com.au
50 — Winston, 2014. Bee Time, p222.
51 — Rothenberg, 2013. Bug Music: How Insects Gave Us Rhythm and Noise, p8.
52 — Dunn and Crutchfield, 2006. “Insects, Trees, and Climate.”
53 — Raffles, 2010. Insectopedia, p316.
PART III. I ONCE HAD A BUG: HOW PEOPLE CREATED INSECTS
54 — This is evident even when the cliche is turned on its head and turned into self-mocking horror, such as in movies like Meet the Applegates. The humor only works because of the initial gut reaction.
55 — Quammen, 2003. Monster of God, p431.
56 — The World Organisation for Animal Health is referred to by those in the know as the OIE, a historic hangover from 1924, when this organization was founded in Paris as the Office International des Epizooties.
57 — W. Grimes, “When Bugs Declared Total War on Wine,” New York Times (March 26, 2005). http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/26/books/when-bugs-declared-total-war-on-wine.html?_r=1
58 — M. Gladwell, “The Mosquito Killer,” Gladwell.com (July 2, 2001). http://gladwell.com/the-mosquito-killer/
59 — It’s sometimes implied that “pulling the plug” on someone on a respirator at a hospital is “playing God.” In fact, as Paneloux would frame it, it’s when we put in the plug that we are “playing God.”
60 — Readers interested in more titillating details may wish to consult Edward, Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals.
61 — I dealt with some of these complexities with regard to insect-borne zoonoses in my book The Chickens Fight Back (Vancouver, BC: Greystone, 2007).
62 — For more on heptachlor and aldicarb in the food chain, see my book Food, Sex and Salmonella: Why Our Food Is Making Us Sick (Vancouver, BC: Greystone, 2008).
63 — “Bayer Agrees to Terminate All Uses of Aldicarb,” United States Environmental Protection Agency (August 17, 2010). https://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/e51aa292bac25b0b85257359003d925f/29f9dddede97caa88525778200590c93!OpenDocument
64 — See http://www.aglogicchemical.com/about.html
65 — A. Vowels, “Plan Bee,” The Portico (September, 2015). https://www.uoguelph.ca/theportico/archive/2015/PorticoSum2015.pdf
PART IV. BLACK FLY SINGING: REIMAGINING INSECTS
66 — Hölldobler and Wilson, 2009. Superorganism: The Beauty, Elegance and Strangeness of Insect Societies, p486.
67 — “The Composer and Conductor Mr. Fung Liao,” Bolingo.org (July 28, 2006). http://bolingo.org/cricket/mrfung.htm
68 — Cicada Invasion Survival Guide. http://cicadainvasion.blogspot.ca/
69 — L. Bridget, “Fleas Are for Lovers,” Ploughshares (June 9, 2010). http://blog.pshares.org/index.php/fleas-are-for-lovers/
70 — Raffles, 2010. Insectopedia, p343.
71 — In fact, the last known swarm of Patanga succincta was in 1908, in India. Its pestiferous activities in Thailand were thus more “grasshopper-like.”
72 — Cerritos and Cano-Santana, 2008. “Harvesting Grasshoppers Sphenarium purpurascens in Mexico for Human Consumption.”
73 — Cruz-Rodríguez et al., 2016. “Autonomous Biological Control.”
74 — They are classified as Coccinellidae, a family of beetles belonging to the suborder Polyphaga.
75 — Lockwood, 2013. Infested Mind, p171.
PART V. GOT TO GET YOU INTO MY LIFE
76 — Xu et al., 2013. “Insect Tea.”
77 — Cahill, 1995. How the Irish Saved Civilization, p217.
78 — Rittell and Webber, 1973. “Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning.” See also Brown et al., 2010. Tackling Wicked Problems.
79 — Flannery, 2010. Here on Earth, pp126–127.
80 — The name SLA was drawn from “symbiosis,” which SLA leader Donald DeFreeze defined as “a body of dissimilar bodies and organisms living in deep and loving harmony and partnership in the best interest of all within the body.” At least in the abstract sense, then, the two SLAs appear to be similar.
81 — See http://www.aspirefg.com/
82 — C. Matthews, “Bugs on the Menu in Ghana as Palm Weevil Protein Hits the Pan. The Guardian (January 3, 2016). https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2016/jan/03/bugs-eat-insects-palm-weevils-ghana-protein
83 — Kinyuru et al., 2013. “Nutrient Composition of Four Species of Winged Termites.”
84 — The Japanese will sometimes add the suffix -san after a name, which is a gender-neutral honorific with no real English counterpart, perhaps comparable to a Mr. or Ms., but more respectful. In this book, I have used the name and form of address most used by the people I talked to and their friends. Yukiko, for instance, having been educated in Canada and worked in the international book trade, asked that I simply call her by her first name.
85 — As a bonus, I got to see kaffir limes, whose leaves I had used for cooking at home; I had wondered what the fruits looked like, having never seen them before. They look like wrinkly limes, a little like small guavas, and are apparently used to make soap and shampoo and other personal cleaning products — as well as for cooking stir-fries and curries.
86 — LAK = Lao kip, the local currency; 1,000 LAK is about 12 US cents. So if he had eight cycles with ten kilograms per cycle, he would pull in just over US$300/year. Not a lot, but in Lao PDR, a living.
87 — See http://www.theorganicprepper.ca/updated-prepping-for-an-ebola-lockdown-10022014
88 — Tomberlin et al., 2015. “Protecting the Environment through Insect Farming.”
89 — See http://www.enterrafeed.com/about/#history. Although not mentioned on the website, soybeans, once proclaimed as the great alternative to livestock meat that was going to save the planet, are now an important driver of deforestation in South America.
90 — On July 20, 2016, Enterra announced that, after four years of testing and review, CFIA had officially approved their product as an ingredient for chicken feed.
91 — F. Tarannum, “Crickets the New Chicken? That’s Chef Meeru Dhalwala’s Mission,” The Tyee (July 30, 2015). http://thetyee.ca/Culture/2015/07/30/Edible-Crickets/
92 — The Russian Mennonite name for perogies.
93 — S. Killingsworth, “Tables for Two: The Black Ant,” The New Yorker (August 24, 2015). http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/08/24/tables-for-two-the-black-ant
94 — J. De Graaff, “Dishing Up Insects with Kylie Kwong,” Broadsheet (May 1, 2013). http://www.broadsheet.com.au/melbourne/food-and-drink/article/dishing-insects-kylie-kwong-billy
95 — J. Branco, “Entomophagy, a Pint of Science and the Men Who Want You to Eat Bugs.” Brisbane Times (May 20, 2015). http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/entomophagy-a-pint-of-science-and-the-men-who-want-you-to-eat-bugs-20150520-gh606x.html
PART VI. REVOLUTION 1
96 — Schweitzer’s “Reverence for Life,” for which he received a Nobel Peace Prize, is similar to the beliefs of the Jains in India.
97 — Michael Ignatieff, The Needs of Strangers (Toronto: Penguin, 1984), 13.
98 — Henry Regier, “Ecosystem Integrity
in a Context of Ecostudies as Related to the Great Lakes Region,” in Perspectives on Ecological Integrity, eds. L. Westra and J. Lemon (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1995), 88–101.
99 — Lockwood, 1987. “The Moral Standing of Insects.”
100 — Barron et al., 2016. “What Insects Can Tell Us About the Origins of Consciousness.”
101 — “The Green Brain Project,” http://greenbrain.group.shef.ac.uk/
102 — K. Segedin, “The Unexpected Beauty of Bugs,” BBC (May 1, 2015). http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150425-the-beautiful-bugs-of-earth-capture
103 — “The Beautiful Bugs of Belize,” BBC (March 16, 2015). http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150309-the-beautiful-bugs-of-belize
104 — This resonates with Mark Winston’s comment: “What is unique about our relationship with honey bees is not only how much we depend on their services but also the fact that their health and survival depend on how well we manage the environment on which they rely. If we had a formal contract with honey bees, its executive summary might read something like this: We, the bees, will provide you with honey and other products of the hive, as well as pollination services. In return you, the humans, will maintain an environment in which we can thrive, free of toxic pesticides and rich in diverse flowering plants.” See Winston, Bee Time.
105 — Rains et al., 2008. “Using Insect Sniffing Devices for Detection.” There are also other papers on the subject.
106 — Obviously not a study designed by an epidemiologist.
107 — Defect Levels Handbook, United States Food and Drug Administration (2016). http://www.fda.gov/Food/GuidanceRegulation/GuidanceDocuments RegulatoryInformation/SanitationTransportation/ucm056174.htm
108 — “Risk Profile Related to Production and Consumption of Insects as Food and Feed,” EFSA Journal 13(10, 2016)): 4257, doi:10.2903/j.efsa.2015.4257. See https://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/efsajournal/pub/4257