| Abstract | The initial purpose of this study is to understand the EU’s objective of partially substitute the actual protein intake of the Europeans with insects’ proteins. EU, implementing its Common Agricultural Policy program, wants to face the challenges of food sustainability and environment footprint. In fact, the growing world population puts pressure on the planet’s capacity to produce enough food for everybody.
Moreover, the actual food production is unsustainable: too many “high environmental footprint” proteins are part of the western countries’ diets. Insects’ proteins, characterized by “low environmental footprint”, are proposed by the EU to solve those challenging XXI century’s problems.
A new issue coming up nowadays is the proven carcinogen characteristics of the red meat. The EU has still not taken a position about that, but again insects’ proteins could be a solution.
Finally, insects’ proteins are almost fat free compared to other types of meat. A greater insect food intake can solve today’s problems of western countries obesity.
Developing the subject, it becomes clear that new opportunities are ahead. Big changes in the European environment encourage the introduction of insect food into the EU market.
First, a new favorable legislation pushes the implementation of insect food into the Europeans’ diet. This will probably be sustained by EU’s subventions to insects’ harvesters.
Second, EU’s policy and European’s attitude are favorable to implement actions to make more sustainable their environmental and food footprint.
Third, the business opportunities and subventions will help entrepreneurs in starting the insect food business in the EU.
To have a more objective point of view on the subject, I conducted a one-hundred EU’s people survey about their attitude towards insect food. According to the results, almost 90% of Europeans are favorable to the insertion of insect food into the EU. Moreover, 50% of them seem ready to at least try to eat insect’s products. An interesting outcome is that 45% of the studied sample would eat an “insect-steak burger”.
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Moreover, I interviewed some companies that are already selling insect food in EU to understand how they succeed and what are the best practices in this “difficult” market: companies’ success stands on overcoming the consumer negative perception about insects.
The final objective of this study is to give a guide to companies who want to enter the insect food business in EU: what is the actual perception of insect food in Europe and understand how to change the perception of Europeans about insect food. |