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Vietnam has become a middle-income country with diversified consumption structure and many challenges in food security. This study aims to identify food consumption trends and point out some policy implications for controlling food security in Vietnam. The study uses a 12-year series of...
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Others pushing edible insects include Yang Ping-shih (楊平世), a professor emeritus with National Taiwan University's (NTU) Department of Entomology, and Chen Young-fa (陳陽發), a research assistant who specializes in insects at the Experimental Forest under NTU's College of Bio-Resources and Agriculture.
In 2015, the two published an article listing the benefits of eating insects in Nature Conservation Quarterly, a Chinese-language journal issued by the Taiwan Biodiversity Research Institute.
Chen explained that early farming communities in Taiwan and a number of the island's Indigenous peoples have a long history of catching and consuming bugs, which means eating insects would have the virtue of preserving not only the environment but also local culture.
Yet, Taiwan continues to lag far behind in the field, and not just because insects are well beyond the comfort zones of most Taiwanese.
Another serious barrier, local experts argue, are government policies that both limit and discourage progress, including only having four species on its list of edible bugs, compared to the 1,900 types identified and logged by the FAO across the globe.
According to Taiwan's Food and Drug Administration (TFDA), only red wiggler earthworms (Eisenia andrei), weaver ants (Polyrhachis Vicina Roger), bee pupas, and silkworm chrysalis can be consumed or sold for edible purposes.
Sellers of any other species not on the list without proper government approval would violate the Act Governing Food Safety and Sanitation and be subject to a fine of up to NT$200 million (US$6.17 million).
Ironically, it was a government agency, the Chiayi Forest District Office under the Ministry of Agriculture's Forestry and Nature Conservation Agency, that almost got nabbed under the law for hosting an event that hyped eating an unapproved bug.
Read more here.