First part of my response to Andrew's Post found here
I agree that these could potentially be solutions, or at least better alternatives to eating animals. There are a few problems however, namely with the first one. Entomophagy, the consumption of insects, is not exactly a healthy choice to make.
Insects have health risks that aren't as prevalent in other animals; they have different kinds of parasites which are more difficult to get rid of compared to the bacteria and parasites in meat; due to the nature of their size, the preparation is less effective at killing parasites; their bodies cannot, at the expense of retaining a decent taste, bear the temperatures necessary to kill the bacteria and parasites. In California there were a number of cases of lead poisoning caused by the consumption of grasshoppers. Additionally, in order to make entomophagy more reasonable, we would have to cease using insecticides or herbicides, given that those are unsuitable for human consumption.
While I agree that eating insects is better, in terms of ethics, than eating other animals, I am not inclined to agree that because people care less about insects than other animals it is acceptable to go out of our way to kill insects. The ethics of vegetarianism is as follows: If you can sustain yourself without causing other living things to suffer, you ought to do so; this is also negotiable in that if you must cause suffering it is best to cause as little of it as possible. So, it would be perfectly ethical to eat the likes of shellfish, meal-worms, larvae, and other grub given that their capacity for pain is very low. Thus, farming insects like grasshoppers to eat would be more ethically appropriate, but not as appropriate as not doing so.
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