EU regulation: Insect powder allowed in bread, beer and chocolate

Bread, beer and chocolate: In addition to conventional ingredients, the list of ingredients for these foods may in future also include ground crickets. This emerges from an EU regulation of January 6th, which authorizes the approval of partially defatted powder from house crickets as a novel food on the European market.

However, such regulations are not entirely new: with the migratory locust and the yellow mealworm, two insect species were already approved as food in the European Union in 2021. Ground crickets are not the first insects to be approved for consumption across the EU.

The new regulation is scheduled to come into force on January 24, 2023. The application for approval was submitted by the Vietnamese company in July 2019 Cricket One Co.Ltd posed. For five years, the cricket powder in the EU may initially only be sold by this company.

Also allowed in meat substitutes

Specifically, the cricket powder may be added to these products, among others:

• Certain bakery and pasta products
• crackers, breadsticks, cereal bars
• sauces
• Processed potato products
• Pizza
• soups and soup concentrates or powders
• Beer-like beverages
• chocolate products
• nuts and oilseeds
• Meat analogues (i.e. meat substitute products)
• Snacks (except chips)
• meat preparations

However, the amount of powder that can be added to the individual products is limited. For example, meat substitutes may contain a maximum of five grams of cricket powder per 100 grams, chocolate products two grams and beer 0.1 grams.

Note for allergy sufferers

Responsible for the Safety check in the course of approval is the European Food Safety Authority. “EFSA came to the conclusion that the consumption of the evaluated insect proteins can potentially lead to allergic reactions,” says the Austrian Agency for Health and Food Safety (AGES). This may be particularly the case for people “with pre-existing allergies to crustaceans, house dust mites and, in some cases, molluscs”. According to AGES, an indication of any allergic reactions that may occur must therefore also be placed in the immediate vicinity of the list of ingredients.

In the labeling of the respective foodstuff, the designation of the novel foodstuff is “Partially defatted powder Acheta domesticus (domestic cricket)’. A separate form of labeling of insect products (e.g. in the product name) is not specified in the EU regulation. For the time being, consumers can only find out whether a product contains parts of insects from the small print of the list of ingredients.

Food of the future?

While the thought of edible insects is still rather strange in this country, they are considered a delicacy in other countries. In fact, edible insects are an excellent source of protein, which, in addition to high-quality animal protein, also contains many vitamins and minerals. In terms of sustainability, the creepy-crawlies also have certain advantages over conventional livestock, for example when they are bred less space and water require, but at the same time produce fewer greenhouse gases.

What do you make of it? Would you eat ground insects in pastries, beer or chocolate? Let us know in the comments.