Entomophagy for the Environment?

The Guardian reports on a new Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) report that suggests insect-eating as a way to mitigate the human demand for meat, especially in countries where insects are already consumed as part of local cuisines: "the FAO's priority will be to boost the eating of insects where this is already accepted but has been in decline due to western cultural influence."

It's easy to dismiss the idea as cranky or silly, but there is a valid point in there - people in industrialized nations already eat shrimp, which are quite similar. And it's not all about fried locust, either. Insects could be useful as feed for more conventional livestock, or turned into some kind of homogeneous patty, the better to disguise their origins.

My main bugbear about the article is that it talks about insects in the title but the picture shows scorpions on sticks. To be fair, the text of the article does say "insects and other creepy-crawlies," so it's not entirely wrong.