Abstract
Proponents of entomophagy have argued that the farming of insects offers many advantages when contrasted with more traditional farming practices. This article explores the place of insect farming within a wider Christian food ethic and argues that insect farming has much to recommend it. However, through exploring the role of animal agriculture within the ideological structures of anthropocentrism, a more ambiguous picture of the ethics of insect farming emerges. This belies a simple endorsement or denunciation of insect farming as an ethical alternative to the farming of larger animals. Moreover, the example of insect farming reveals that Christian food ethics needs to radically reimagine the entire food provisioning system if it is to inculcate substantive change in human relationships with nonhuman animals.
Highlights
Proponents of entomophagy have argued that the farming of insects offers many advantages when contrasted with more traditional farming practices
I explore the main merits of the farming of insects for a Christian food ethic, focusing both on animal agriculture as socio-environmental system and on the flourishing of the individual animals within animal farms
Having established the multitudinous reasons why a Christian food ethic might look positively on the farming of insects, I turn to conceptualizations of animal agriculture as an ideological system
Summary
‘Eating insects could help us save the planet’.1 This headline, introducing readers to the BBC’s most recent exploration of entomophagy (the practice of eating insects), encapsulates the driving sentiment behind most popular expositions of the merits of human consumption of insects. Attention is naturally granted to both the gustatory dimensions of entomophagy—readers are assured that insects can, if prepared properly, be surprisingly pleasant to eat—and to the nutritional benefits of eating insects. These arguments are often subordinated to a more prominent claim that the consumption of. Having established the multitudinous reasons why a Christian food ethic might look positively on the farming of insects, I turn to conceptualizations of animal agriculture as an ideological system. I conclude by suggesting that the example of insect farming suggests that Christian food ethics needs a more radical and comprehensive understanding of the symbolic and ideological functions of animal agriculture
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