Singapore Approves 16 Insect Species for Human Consumption

Bugs may soon make an appearance on dinner plates and grocery store shelves in Singapore.

The city-state in Southeast Asia recently approved 16 types of insects as food. On July 8, the Singapore Food Agency released a public document laying out newly established regulatory guidelines.

“Following the guidelines will help ensure that the insects and insect products sold in Singapore as food [are] safe and suitable for consumption,” per the agency.

Singaporeans and visitors may soon be chowing down on several species of crickets, grasshoppers, mealworms, beetles, moths and honeybees. The bugs may also be used to feed food-producing animals.

Insects must be raised on regulated farms rather than harvested from the wild. The agency also specifies the life stage at which each insect can be imported. For instance, mealworms can only be eaten in the larva stage, while American desert locusts can only be eaten in the adult stage.

“It’s really amazing to see that they have such a big list of species,” Skye Blackburn, an Australian entomologist and food scientist, tells the Guardian’s Helen Sullivan. “It’s really showing that Singapore is a little bit more open than we thought they were going to be to edible insects.”

The decision comes amid Singapore’s broader efforts to boost food security, diversify food sources and decrease its dependence on imports, which account for more than 90 percent of its food, according to Bloomberg’s Shikhar Gupta. By 2030, Singapore wants to be able to meet 30 percent of its food needs locally.

Only 1 percent of Singapore’s land is currently used for agriculture. That’s unlikely to change much in the future, given the city-state’s small footprint and the competing demands for land. But the government is encouraging farmers to boost their production by using innovative technologies and growing methods, such as “indoor multi-story LED lighting and recirculating aquaculture systems,” per the food agency.

Some chefs in Singapore are already putting insects on the menu, including Francis Ng at the restaurant House of Seafood, reports the Straits Times’ Cheryl Tan. He offers 30 dishes that feature insects, such as sushi topped with silkworms and salted egg crabs with superworms.

“Many of our customers, especially young people who are under 30 years old, are very daring,” Ng tells the publication. “They want to be able to see the whole insect in the dish.”

Diners in more than 110 countries consume 2,100 species of insects, a practice known as entomophagy. In Mexico, for instance, chefs in Oaxaca deep-fry or roast grasshoppers, which they put on corn tortillas and season with lime juice and chile. In this crunchy, tangy preparation, grasshoppers are called chapulines.

Meanwhile, deep-fried crickets are available in Cambodia, and bamboo worms are eaten in Thailand.

However, in many parts of the world, insects remain a relatively uncommon ingredient in human meals.

Some experts hope they catch on, especially amid human-caused climate change. Bugs are full of protein, vitamins and minerals—and farming them produces less methane, nitrous oxide and carbon dioxide than livestock like cattle. They also take up less space and require fewer resources.

“Insects are 60 percent dry weight protein. I mean, honestly, why wouldn’t we use them?” Agnes Kalibata, a Rwandan agricultural scientist who served as a food systems special envoy to the United Nations, told Time magazine’s Aryn Baker in 2021. “But we have to be able to put them in a form that is acceptable to different cultures and different societies.”

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Sarah Kuta is a writer and editor based in Longmont, Colorado. She covers history, science, travel, food and beverage, sustainability, economics and other topics.