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Against Cricket Cakes

The Davos set really wants you to eat bugs.

Close,Up,Of,Crickets,In,Farm,,For,Consumption,As,Food
(Lamyai/Shutterstock)

Until now, common sense led us to unhesitatingly step on any insects we find dragging their bellies across the kitchen floor. But currently, the masters of the universe are set on correcting this practice: They prefer you to eat them.

In recent months there has been a worldwide campaign, especially intense in the European Union, to convince us to incorporate crickets and worms into our diet. And, as we are not yet crazy enough to do so, they have found a way to make us do it anyway: by including them as a substitute for flour and protein in products we consume on a daily basis.

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The founding text of the E.U. states that the union is founded "on the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights." And it assures us that its purpose is to promote peace, its values, and the well-being of its peoples. As much as I have read all the founding documents, I have never found any trace of cricket in there. And yet, right now, the E.U. is betting everything on cricket flour as the miracle food that will save the planet.

Just days ago, the Spanish government passed an official regulation authorizing the use of crickets in products destined for human consumption, relying in turn on the recent (and almost unknown until now) authorization granted by the European Union in its list of "novel foods." It is even worse than it looks at first glance: since last summer, the E.U. has also approved dried yellow mealworm and the migratory locust as novel foods. I suspect that tarantulas, car mats, and MEP brains are also soon to be included on that list.

From now on, bread, cookies, pizzas, sauces, snacks, and other bakery products could be made with cricket flour, which is manufactured by crushing and grinding crickets. At least in Spain, the recommendation is that the manufacturer clearly point it out on the packaging, but it is just a recommendation, and—except for listing insects in ingredients and allergen warnings—they are not obliged to do so. It stands to reason that no cookie manufacturer is going to change a foreground of beautiful, sunny wheat fields for a plague of smiling, sunglass-wearing crickets on the front of its package, if it ever wants to sell another cookie.

The origin of all this madness can be found in what the E.U. calls the "Farm to Fork Strategy,” or what I call the "From Cricket to Pot" strategy. This is part of the European Green Deal, which according to the Germans and Ursula von der Leyen is the E.U.’s grand project for post-pandemic economic recovery. So far no one in Brussels has been able to explain what the hell a green deal has to do with economic recovery.

Farm to Fork aims "to make food systems fair, healthy and environmentally-friendly." I do not know if cricket flour is particularly environmentally friendly, but what I do know is that it isn’t at all cricket-friendly, a matter that does not seem to worry post-modern ecologists at all.

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So far, the only European leader who has defended citizens who do not want to be forced to eat crickets is Italian minister Francesco Lollobrigida: "There will be no room in this government for synthetic meat and cricket meal. Our goal is to defend citizens from degeneration who want to pass the idea that it is enough to feed, regardless of where and how food is produced. But we cannot accept it.” In making his statement, Lollobrigida has become our representative for common sense in Europe.

But there is another issue. For the next five years, all cricket flour consumed in Europe can only be manufactured by Cricket One Co. Ltd. Why? We'd like to know... The company's slogan is "Classic Protein for a Modern World," and we would expect to find crickets hopping around the screen or images of insect hatcheries and the like on its official website. But the main image is a beautiful green wheat field. A little further down, and not by chance, you will find the official logos and texts of the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals, also known as the 2030 Agenda. That is the one the Davos Forum explained to us in the controversial video about its forecasts for 2030, in which they announced that "You'll own nothing," and "you'll be happy about it."

The United States is not as restrictive about what you can and cannot eat as the European Union. The United States, thank God, is not as restrictive about anything. So Americans can eat insects if it makes them happy, however, if you do buy a product with, for example, cricket flour, it should be clear on the labeling in both its scientific name and its common name. So far, however, Biden has not taken it upon himself to get Americans to save the planet by eating cricket crackers or swapping their delicious beef burgers for ones made with mealworm fibers, which is the goal of Farm to Fork.

Although the environmental left is not yet focused on the United States in its campaign for insect consumption, there are media powers-that-be working in the shadows to make it happen. And they all seem to have come to some sort of agreement over the last few weeks: A look at recent news about "cricket flour" in the press will dissipate any doubts that there is a plan, and you will be surprised by the enthusiasm that suddenly all the progressive media shows for the prospect of seeing us all eat insects.

Even scientific publications such as Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) openly discuss how to achieve this, as if it must happen by all means: "How to convince people to eat insects." Incidentally, the article tells of a visit from entomophagy activists to a school in Pennsylvania who cooked insects and forced the children to try them, as if it was a success story. I can't help but think that everything is moving too fast now: In my day, if an activist came to class to teach us how to eat crickets, cooked one of them, and held it up to our mouths, we would never have eaten the cricket, but we might have eaten the activist.

Everything with the cricket story is wrong. The E.U. approval wouldn’t matter if it were about selling boxes of crickets as snacks, but it is in fact about institutionally promoting a cricket flour that should never have been called "flour" in the first place, which allows it to be included in commonly consumed products. Manufacturers will find a way to obtain subsidies for putting crickets in their cookies, and people who buy the cheapest and lowest quality products will end up unknowingly eating cricket cookies. The truth is that all this is a perfect summary of what the rich people who go to places like Davos want: for you to travel by scooter and for them to keep on filling airports with their private jets every time they hold a meeting; for you to eat insects while they dine in private rooms at the best restaurants in the world.

Conservatives worldwide should follow Lollobrigida's example, because they have everything to gain. It is a battle that can obviously be won on the street without much effort. I don't know anyone who wants to leave their children a world where you can only get around by bicycle or, at best, electric cars, where heating is banned, and at lunchtime you find a salad with crickets, worms, and fake steaks by Bill Gates waiting for you on your plate. That is not a world, that is hell.

For centuries, much of the superiority of Western civilization has been apparent in our food. There is no need to give our moral decline a seat at the dinner table. Refusing to eat insects is a show of respect and obedience to our mothers, who, when as babies we lifted bugs from the ground to our mouths, told us, "Don't eat that!"

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