Canada’s multimillion-dollar factory to farm crickets is falling silent amid layoffs. Once dismissed as a “right-wing conspiracy theory,” harvesting insects for human consumption is an emerging policy goal for the worldwide left. Without an understanding of the market, though, such schemes will be a breakfast boondoggle.

“In matters of taste,” a quote attributed to various retail pioneers goes, “the customer is always right.” The first half of the slogan has fallen away in the century since it emerged, truncated to “the customer is always right.” On the matter of serving bugs, the entire phrase is being ignored by those who think they know better.

An article in Science magazine was blunt. “To Fight Global Warming,” the headline read, “Eat Bugs.” That was in 2011. The stated reason is that “cows and pigs” are “big sources of the heat-trapping gases carbon dioxide and methane.”

Although bugs are small, eating them inspires big feelings. North Americans squirm at the thought of consuming insects. This revulsion led to an NPR discussion in July, which stated, “This right-wing conspiracy theory about eating bugs is about as racist as you think,” as if finding another culture’s culinary preferences unsavory is a moral defect.

NPR focused on the claim that “global elites” are “forcing” people to eat insects. Not yet, at least. Such policies, though, often start as suggestions only to be mandated later. Think controls on trans-fats in New York City. The ruling Liberal Party of Canada has already chosen to advance the idea of eating bugs, despite the fact that its citizens won’t support it in the free market.

Two years ago, Prime Minister Trudeau awarded Aspire Food Group an $8.5 million grant to build a 150,000-square-foot factory to farm edible crickets at London, Ontario. Touted as the largest such facility in the world, it’s now laid off two-thirds of its 150 staffers.

According to an advocacy group, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, their government has “spent $420,023 since 2018 subsidizing companies that turn crickets into human food.” NAAK, one of five companies given the cash, makes “cricket energy bars.” Developing “steaks, sausages, and falafels” was a condition of the government funds.

“If Prime Minister Justin Trudeau wants to take a bite out of crunchy crickets,” the director of the Taxpayers Federation, Franco Terrazzano, said in a September statement, “he can do it without taking a bite out of taxpayers’ wallets.”

Aspire was created after a proposal on using bugs to solve world hunger won a $1 million award from the Clinton Global Initiative in 2013. The targeted markets were people in the developing world. In Mexico, grasshoppers are already a staple. In Botswana, it’s caterpillars, and in the People’s Republic of China, various larvae.

Sensationalized stories on the topic often show intact crickets on plates or skewered by utensils, but the manufacturers produce powder or “cricket flour.” Aspire signed a deal with a Korean food distributor in September 2022 to sell the product for human consumption, but pet-food companies are its main customers.

The World Economic Forum reported in July 2021 that as many as 1.2 trillion insects “are raised on farms annually for food and animal feed.” Since Americans spend $64.4 billion a year on pet food, companion animals — not to mention those on farms — are the most natural consumers to target here.

Promoting the sale of insect protein for animal feed in North America and as human food elsewhere would be more effective for advocates than their current course. They’d have to resist the urge to demonize the opposition and trust the market to do its job. 

The top-down approach — hectoring people who recoil at having Jiminy Cricket for dinner — is doomed. Dietary preferences are difficult to change and far outside the government’s purview in a free society. As the Conservative Party of Canada put it in a petition against Mr. Trudeau, “We won’t eat bugs.” Let him remember that in matters of taste, whoever’s holding the fork is always right.