21/9/23

WHY NOT EAT HUMAN?

ENTOMOPHAGY: • QUESTION: Why do we not eat human meat?

EDIBLE INSECTS
LECTURE 4 – ENVIRONMENTAL BENEFITS & ETHICS

WHY NOT EAT HUMAN? WHY NOT EAT HUMAN?

• Human meat is the least sustainable food and the most

• Obviously illegal… emphathy-generating

• Risk of disease
• Kuru – tremors, ataxia,
laughter, paralysis,
infection, death

The Matrix ⿊客帝國 (1999) Daybreakers ⾎世紀 (2009)

Child with advanced kuru

CAN INSECTS SAVE THE WORLD? CAN INSECTS SAVE THE WORLD?

• Lots of marketing for insects as “saving the world.”

• Question: Can someone summarize the argument?
• In 2050, earth may have
>9billion (90億) people
• Food production must
increase by 70%

FAO. 2009. “How to Feed the World in 2050.”

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CAN INSECTS SAVE THE WORLD? TERMS

• Humans are eating more food, and more of it is meat. • Food – What we humans eat
• Feed – What the food eats [substrate, feedstock]
• Livestock – Farmed mammals and birds

FAO. 2009. “How to Feed the World in 2050.”

THE PROBLEM WITH MEAT THE PROBLEM WITH MEAT

• Feed to Protein Ratio • The problem: mammals and birds are warm-blooded
• Much inedible matter • Insects are cold blooded. Higher conversion ratio
• Water usage
• Animal waste
• Land use
• Competition with
human food
• Greenhouse gas emissions

THE BENEFIT OF INSECTS THE BENEFIT OF INSECTS

• More edible body mass. More protein per resources! • Can eat inedible feeds: organic side streams, wastes

Animal Feed -> Body weight -> Consumable meat

https://duurzaaminsecteneten.nl/tag/cijfers/

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THE BENEFIT OF INSECTS THE BENEFIT OF INSECTS

• Require less water.

• Produce less CO2,
ammonia,
greenhouse gasses

• Only Blattodea
[cockroaches,
termites] make
methane

THE BENEFIT OF INSECTS THE BENEFIT OF INSECTS

• Not land-based. No land-clearing. Can rear vertically. • Less risk of transmitting zoonotic diseases to humans, wildlife
• Most land use [for insects and livestock] is for the feed. • No need for antibiotics

Mad Cow Disease 瘋牛病 SARS 嚴重急性呼吸道綜合徵

THE BENEFIT OF INSECTS TO SAVE THE PLANET

• Low tech, low capital -> Lower barriers to entry • Is insect protein better than vegetable protein?
• Easy for the poor, landless, women in developing nations • Soy takes more land, which means cut down forests. Some more water.
• Plants absorb CO2, require no feed, and are vegan-friendly

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WHO CARES? TO SAVE THE PLANET?

• PETA and other vegan groups have complained

“為什麼蟋蟀是朋友而不是食物”

TO SAVE THE PLANET? TO SAVE THE PLANET

• Entovegan – plants and sustainable insects.

[term invented by company selling insect-based cosmetics]

• Poll: What is easier? Getting people to be vegan, or to eat

insects instead of animal meat?

TO SAVE THE PLANET TO SAVE THE PLANET

• “Impossible Foods” and “Beyond Meat” • Other sources of protein

• Soy and pea flour burgers respectively. • Algae <- Absorbs CO2 well, vegan
• Soy heme and beet juice added so meat even “bleeds”

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TO SAVE THE PLANET TO SAVE THE PLANET

• Other sources of protein • Other sources of protein

• Fungi / Mycoprotein <- Vegan, meat-like, well accepted • In vitro meat <- Actually is meat. Currently expensive.

TO SAVE THE PLANET TO SAVE THE PLANET

• Other sources of protein • To save the planet, do we need more insects or less livestock?
• In vitro seafood (Ex: Shiok Meats, Singapore)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJH82M54ZK0

TO SAVE THE PLANET TO SAVE THE PLANET

• The main benefits of insects are not to Westerners, but to • Protein deficiency is a separate problem from starvation
impoverished areas without other protein sources • The benefit of edible insects is strongest in these areas!

Disability-adjusted life years to protein deficiency

Kwashiorkor – symptoms of protein deficiency

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BREAK THE ETHICS OF EATING INSECTS

• Group Discussion: Is it ethical to kill an insect? If so, when?

THE ETHICS OF EATING INSECTS THE ETHICS OF EATING INSECTS

• Unacceptable to strict Jainists and ultra-vegans

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W083nSzx1Rc

THE ETHICS OF EATING INSECTS THE ETHICS OF EATING INSECTS

• Moral status – Humans have a moral obligation to it • Moral status – Humans have a moral obligation to it
• If you want to uphold animal rights, you must also uphold • A line must be drawn somewhere…
insect rights… right?

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THE ETHICS OF EATING INSECTS THE ETHICS OF EATING INSECTS

• Moral status – Humans have a moral obligation to it • Animal Welfare 動物福利

• A line must be drawn somewhere… • Goal is to reduce suffering
• When is it OK to kill an animal? According to whom? • If it can suffer, then it has moral status
• Euthanasia is OK. Eating meat is not.

THE ETHICS OF EATING INSECTS THE ETHICS OF EATING INSECTS

• Pragmatic ethics
• Animal Rights 動物權益
• Right and wrong is a social construct.
• Goal is to reduce “wrong” behavior. All killing is wrong.
• The public’s opinion and consumer ethics matter
• If it has a plan of life, goals, & memory, then moral status
• Compare bees and butterflies to mosquitoes and roaches
• Anti-Cruelty: do not subject to pain unless necessary

THE ETHICS OF EATING INSECTS THE ETHICS OF EATING INSECTS

• For animal welfare and animal rights advocates: • “What Is it Like to Be a Bat?” – Thomas Nagel, 1974
• Insects have moral status if they are sentient
• Able to feel, perceive, be conscious
• Need to have subjective experience

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WHAT IS CONSCIOUSNESS? WHAT IS CONSCIOUSNESS?

• Are cows conscious? Do cows feel pain? Do cows suffer? • Are fish conscious? Do fish feel pain? Do fish suffer?
• Yes • How can you tell?

WHAT IS CONSCIOUSNESS? WHAT IS PAIN?

• Are insects conscious? Are insects self-aware? • Nociception – “the sensory perception of potentially
• Shaking a bee makes them avoid risky decisions, just like damaging noxious stimuli“
depressed humans. Insects can be stressed. • Requires nerves called “nociceptors.” What you sense
• Hormonal, not emotional. They may not be conscious of it.

No universally
agreed-upon
definition of
consciousness

doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2011.05.017

WHAT IS PAIN? WHAT IS PAIN?

• Pain – “an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience
associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or
described in terms of such damage” - The International
Association for the Study of Pain
• Emotional state of the brain. What you feel.
• You can have nociception without pain [sense, not feel]
• Ex: Chronic Insensitivity to Pain
• You can have pain without nociception [feel, not sense]
• Ex: Pain asymbolia, phantom pain

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WHAT IS PAIN? WHAT IS PAIN?

• Nociception alerts us to damage.

• Humans without nociceptors exist: CIPA

• Group Discussion:
How can you tell if something senses pain?
How can you tell if something feels pain?

WHAT IS PAIN? WHAT IS PAIN?

• Pain versus suffering • Nociception -> Behavior to

• A concept that an alternative is better escape pain
• Subjective feeling of pain • Suffering -> Avoidance of
• Reponses must not be reflexes normal behavior
• Facial expressions, • Animal in pain won’t eat
shouting, etc. are for or mate
pain, not suffering • Animal with damaged
• Decorticate humans body part won’t move it,
will show all signs of will hide it
pain, even though • Requires nervous system
they cannot suffer!
Rose, James D. "The neurobehavioral nature of fishes and the question of awareness and pain." Reviews in Fisheries Science 10.1 (2002): 1-38.

CAN PLANTS FEEL PAIN? CAN PLANTS FEEL PAIN?

• Are plants conscious? Do plants feel pain? Do plants suffer? • Does positive music make plants grow better?
• No, no, and no. • Tested by the Mythbusters, Episode 23
• No nervous system • Control (no music) < Speech [positive or negative] <
• No evolutionary benefit Classical music < Intense and violent death metal
• Responding to stimuli • Vibrations do increase plant growth
is not nociception • Music improves gardener’s mood.
• Responding to damage
is not suffering
• Not all life needs to
behave like humans!

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CAN INSECTS FEEL PAIN? CAN INSECTS FEEL PAIN?

• Insects have nociceptors. They can sense pain. • Insects sense acute pain, not chronic pain or damage
• Poking or heating Drosophila larvae makes them roll away
• Sense sharp pokes, heat, and chemicals
• Painless gene similar to human nociceptor gene, prevents rolling
• Will walk on broken limbs, or mate while being eaten
• Not all parts of the body have them.
• No “visceral nociceptors.” No internal pain!

A) Control. B) Poke. C) High temperature poke.

CAN INSECTS FEEL PAIN? CAN INSECTS FEEL PAIN?

• Emotional brain requires more brain cells • Suffering alerts us to chronic damage.
• No pain/suffering center in insect brain. No room • Avoid causing more damage, and wait until you heal
• Only makes sense for long-lived animals
• For short-lived animals [and plants], suffering is pointless

CAN INSECTS FEEL PAIN? CAN INSECTS FEEL PAIN?

• Insect nerves become • Insects have opioid receptors. Many functions, not just pain.
hypersensitized after damage • Honey bees with 1) a paperclip pinching the leg, 2) amputated
• Test with fruit flies. After leg. Given sugar or sugar+morphine
injury, healed legs respond to • No effect of paperclip. Amputees drank more of everything.
lower temperatures than usual. • Neither treatment was “painful”
• Allodynia – something normally
painless causes pain
• Neuropathy -> vigilance.
Ancestor to chronic pain.

https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/7/eaaw4099 https://www.nature.com/articles/srep45825

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ETHICAL OBJECTIONS ETHICAL OBJECTIONS

• What if we are wrong about insects? • Arguments against:

• “Precautionary principle” – What is the alternative? More
• “Precautionary principle” – Since they might be conscious, vertebrates killed in plant farming than insect farming
we should avoid killing them.
• “Expected utility” – Since farming involves so many insects,
even a little suffering adds up to too much.
• “Net negative lives” – If farmed insect lives are mostly
painful, then bringing more into existence is wrong

Fischer, B. (2019). How to Reply to Some Ethical Objections to Entomophagy. Annals of the Entomological
Society of America, 112(6), 511-517. * Note: Most of these plants are grown to feed animals.

ETHICAL OBJECTIONS BEST PRACTICES

• Arguments against: • Arguments against:

• “Expected utility” – Many insects die in plant farming too. • “Net negative lives” – Insects like hot, cramped conditions
• Pest management threatens millions of insects per acre. • Still required to raise animals with the best conditions.
• Math depends on % chance conscious & feed source • Assume they can feel pain, so anaesthetize or kill quickly
• Same math has eating insects as worse than vertebrates!

BEST PRACTICES WHO CARES?

• Death should be “painless, fast, reliable, non-reversible, not • People only started caring about insect welfare when we
psychologically stressful, and economically acceptable” started raising them for food.
• Non-reversible: insects can survive things that kill others • Associated with factory farming
• Freezing and freeze-drying common
• Shredding is best

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WHO CARES? HOMEWORK

• If people know that insects are treated well, no objections

• No proof they are capable of suffering
• Welfare maximized by good farming
• Most animal welfare groups don’t care about insects
• Weekly Discussion assignment
AND
• Writing assignment due in 4 weeks
• Is eating insects morally good, bad, or neutral?
• What are the pros and cons of eating insects?
• Is it more or less ethical than meat? Vegetables?
Is it even a valid question?
• 1500 English words minimum please!

HOMEWORK HOMEWORK

• How to cite sources

• Copy-pasting text from another source is NEVER acceptable!
• 論⽂文引⽤用格式-如何在學術論⽂文中正確的引⽤用⽂文獻
• If you must copy words, use “quotation marks” and cite
your source.
使⽤用引號並引⽤用您的來來源。 • https://www.editing.tw/blog/writing/論⽂文引⽤用格式-
• Copying without “quotation marks” and without citations is 如何在學術論⽂文中正確的引⽤用⽂文獻.html
plagiarism (竊), and is NEVER allowed!
切勿複制粘貼他⼈人的⽂文字。
• Always better to write in your own words
⽤用⾃自⼰己的話寫總是更更好

• 如何在學術論⽂文中正確的引⽤用⽂文獻和使⽤用正確的引⽂文格式？

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