Are insects animals? The ethical position of insects in Dutch vegetarian diets

Climate change and a rising world population are contributing to ever-increasing pressure on global food security. In this context, considerable effort is being expended within the arenas of policy, academia and business to develop solutions to the challenge of feeding the world’s population in a more “sustainable” fashion than the global agri-food network does at present. One such proposed solution is the use of insects as a source of animal feed and human food in Europe and the US (henceforth “the West”), the defining statement of which was a report published by the FAO in 2013. 1 This report outlined the state of the art of research into the consumption of insects – or “entomophagy” – and has provoked a great deal of interest in the subject.