1,000 Australian schools now offering experimental insect-laced food

At least a thousand Australian schools are now offering schoolchildren chips laced with insect protein, a food source being pushed by the World Economic Forum and some environmentalists as a “sustainable” diet choice.

The “edible bug” company Circle Harvest began selling its cricket corn chips to schools across Australia this year and expects the unconventional snack to be purchased by 6,000 schools by mid-2023.

While it is not presented as such, the new school food offering remains experimental, since the direct health effects of human consumption of insects have scarcely been studied. A 2021 journal article called edible insects an “understudied food resource.”

Potential health concerns are raised by the fact that scientists are currently investigating the “hypothesis” that chitin, which forms the exoskeleton of insects and crustaceans, “causes inflammation and allergy.” Protein powders and flours are ordinarily made by grinding whole insects, thus including chitin.

Circle Harvest has warned that those who are allergic to shellfish “can have a similar reaction when eating edible insects.”

Other safety concerns regarding insect consumption are raised by a study that found parasites in 81 percent of examined insect farms. In 30 percent of those cases (91), the parasites “were potentially pathogenic for humans.” The study called edible insects “an underestimated reservoir of human and animal parasites.”

Replacing Australians’ consumption of red meat with insects as a protein source was reportedly recommended in research underlying MP Zali Steggall’s climate action plan, which aims for net zero carbon emissions by 2050. The Australian government currently aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions “by 43 percent below 2005 levels” by 2030.

Circle Harvest founder Skye Blackburn has touted insect consumption as “better for the planet” and believes acceptance of the practice is growing.

Moves to normalize the consumption of crickets and other insects globally have ramped up in recent years in the name of more “sustainable” consumption habits.

A recent video by Business Insider has touted crickets as containing “more protein than beef, without any of the environmental damage.”

In 2021, Great Reset author Klaus Schwab’s World Economic Forum (WEF) argued that “we need to give insects the role they deserve in our food systems.”

Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who is considered the largest private owner of farmland in the United States, in 2019 invested $100,000 into an insect-farming start-up, according to the WEF, which has asserted that bugs have “scope to feed the world.”

Luke Rudkowski alleged on a podcast hosted by the independent journalist Tim Pool on that Australia has “the most amount of young leaders coming from the World Economic Forum influencing their government.”

He believes that the drive by groups like the WEF to replace meat with insects is part of an attempt to make people unhealthy and less independent.

“They understand that if a person is healthy, they’re not as dependent as, of course, the person who is unhealthy. And I think there’s a big agenda to make people unhealthy. I think this is why there’s such a war against meat,”  Rudkowski said.

He continued, saying that many of those calling for the “Fourth Industrial Revolution” have in common a “bigger fight against meat,” which he said is “one of the most … nutritionally dense food out there.”

“When you take away people’s nutrition, you take away their ability for them to be strong and to resist the larger takeover of humanity … some of which is happening right now,” Rudkowski said.