 Yeah, that's amazing. I think we can reconvene. If you would take your seat, we'll begin our next discussion. And as you do take your seat, I want to mention, and I'll try to remember to mention it when we break, there are going to be several emergency announcements, several emergency tests, well, several, I guess two. St. Peter regularly at the beginning of each month holds an emergency test of its sirens. And that will happen today, I believe, at 1. I think that happens. Yes. 1? Yes. It's 1 PM today. And then also there is a national test of the emergency system, and everyone will receive a notification on your cell phone no matter what you do to prevent it. So just do not be alarmed. We have emergency protocols in place. If an actual emergency should emerge, please pay attention to Miguel, the manager, the stage manager here. And he will tell you what to do, but we're not going to have any of those. We're just going to practice having them. So please do note whether your equipment works or not. I also have been asked to announce that session, at the noon time, there's a session listed. Go to the ant, thou sluggard. It's the session about the Hebrew Bible and references to insects in it. It had been going to be held in the Soka, which has been constructed on the south campus. There has been what is described as a catastrophic event there. I didn't ask for details. But at any rate, it has been moved to the Banyur Interfaith Center, Multi-faith Center in Anderson Hall. So please go there during the noon hour if you would like to go to that session. So thanks for that. With that, I turn it over to Margaret, who will launch our questioning. Great. Well, the first question I'll ask is, do our fellow speakers have any questions for Julie and Saganet? Jonathan? Yes. Thanks very much to both Julie and Saganet for a fascinating pair of talks. I think there was a lot of overlap in the content of the talks and some of the recommendations coming out of them. And it seems as though one big point of agreement between the two of you is about recommending people to eat more insects. And so for some of the reasons I was discussing yesterday, I'm a little bit hesitant about this because it does, in a way, involve recommending to people to consume far more individual animals than they have been consuming in the past. For example, someone might eat 100 crickets in a single sitting. And so it seems very important to be confident that we have the welfare standards right and that we're giving these animals good lives when we recommend that people eat them in such large numbers. And then I'm really unsure because it seems like very little research has been done into the welfare of these animals and how to give them good lives in farming environments. So just like you two, to reflect on that really, how does welfare feature in your own thinking about these issues? And what do you see as the most useful things we can do to try and make sure these animals are having good lives? I have lots of thoughts. So to start, I always find it fun when somebody's like, oh, I can't eat insects. I'm a vegetarian. And so I say, OK, that's fine. But it's like, why are you a vegetarian? What is your philosophy behind being a vegetarian? Because a lot of vegetarians are health-based or environmentally-based. And then some are literally vegans who believe that harm can be quantified by numbers of lives lost in your consumption. So then eating thousands of insects is more harmful in their eyes than eating a single cow or chicken. And so it really comes down to definition. And those are very philosophical debates and thoughts. And everybody has very personal views on it. But so from the environmental side, if you are an environmental vegan or vegetarian, the insects can provide this really interesting way that makes it easier to get all of your nutrients. Being a vegan is hard. It's not easy to get all of the essential amino acids by pairing. You have to be intelligent in how you pair your foods. And also, it requires a lot of highly processed foods a lot of time. And so in trying to eat better for ourselves and the environment, less processing is good. So there is this little entovegan group that I find really has kind of connected a lot of the dots. So yeah, insects isn't going to, if you are a vegan, then insects might not be for you. The second thing is about the welfare and the killing of the food insects. And this is something that I find interesting and important is that right now, we mostly freeze the insects. So the insects go into just a natural state of torpor or hibernation. They just kind of fall asleep. And then they stay in the freezer long enough and they eventually die. So that is mostly how people process it. However, refrigeration is a really expensive cost energetically and dollar wise. And so I have fears that when this scales up that what when I came into these ideas 10 years ago and I had sort of the rose-colored glasses and the idyllic perceptions to start realizing that when we scale, that we're going to likely start losing that insect welfare piece that is critical to how this movement is starting. But I think that can so easily be lost. And so I do think it's really important in sort of regulations of insect foods going forward to even if it's a labeling issue so that you can make your decision on how the insects were harvested, I think that's going to be important. Good. I mean, I've got to be honest and say I'm a bit concerned even about freezing insects to death in ordinary household freezers because that's quite a slow process. Something that is more recommendable, I think, is liquid nitrogen, which does kill them essentially instantly. But as you say, that's even harder to scale up on a large commercial scale. Yeah, so I'd like to hear a second at thoughts on this as well. Well, I think life is always a balance, a choice. So what do we do? Do we care most about eating the insects or letting people die or letting people malnourished when there are more than a billion people who are malnourished when they could solve this? I don't want to sound cruel. But I think my scientists tell me that we think about these issues. So the least painful way to kill the insects is freedom slowly. But this is also not practical when we are telling people you can raise a chicken in a very low-tech in your garden, in your backyard. But the vast majority of African households don't have electricity. So are we going to say, yeah, just freedom and eat them? So I think people are not going to care how the insects feel. They are going to eat them, whatever. The way the chicken running around, the backyard are digging and swallowing the worms what they find. So it's a balancing act, really. But I think from the environmental point of view or so when you look at the figures, the efficiency of insects through some of the figures which is commonly cited is to produce one kilo of beef, you need 25 kilos of feed, and 22,000 liters of water to hydrate the animals. You need 95 times more space. So it just makes sense to have these things. But having said that, I'm not saying that eating insects is a silver bullet to solve food security or nutritional security. No, we are not saying that there is alternative to do things better. So I think what Julie said also in the thing is also, you know, we have tried many things. It's organic. Organic, as she said, is not solving our problem. So we have really to think out of the box. And it's not this one. Eating insects is not even out of the box. It is we are just doing the traditional one, what people have been eating for three centuries. Animals have been eating for centuries. How we bring the science and do it better and mainstream it. And I think the only country that I know that have really mastered mainstreaming is Thailand. Thailand is amazing. So I think, yeah, so yeah, we have to think about those. But we have also to balance what is really most important. So yeah. I think that's a really good point. I think pragmatism is what maybe is needed here. I mean, we're in a position of privilege. We all, our bellies are full. We don't face food security. We were able to eat a variety of animal and products this morning that may not have been killed in a humane fashion. So we can sit here nourished and have this kind of academic conversation. But I think the real world scenarios that you're describing, where people, I have friends and colleagues who are faced with food security issues in other parts of the world. If they're choosing between humane euthanasia for the soldier flies that they might be eating or feeding their children, they will, of course, choose feeding their children. And so I think we should be thinking about these issues because if they're vital, animal welfare includes insects. Insects are animals. But I think we also have to really understand that we come from a perspective where we are maybe making suggestions but not necessarily following them. I mean, in the types of food that we eat and the way that other animal products are being killed. I think human suffering is something that we forget about or it's easy to forget about because we can turn on the television and be distracted. But it is a real problem, food security globally. I saw Michael Young and then Anna. Yeah, well, I was going ahead in a little bit different direction but I was impressed that you were able to show the efficacy of trap plants, for example, and particularly microsperidia and control of malaria, which is an enormous scourge. But it brought to mind a question that is connected to a great deal of resistance with regard to genetically modified organisms. Because, you know, one of the principle worries is that you're creating an organism, it can be free-living, it can escape, et cetera, et cetera. But, you know, if you're putting microsperidia together with mosquito, there's going to be somebody that comes along and saying, well, what's the host range for the microsperidia, are we going to, how many different types of mosquitoes are going to affect? But, you know, the resistance, you can't go into a grocery store without picking up a box that says non-GMO. And there were 150 plus Nobel laureates in 2021 that wrote a note to the UN, among others, you know, begging for some balance in the attitude toward genetically modified organisms. You've got a long history, I mean corn, maize is something that we created. And there's, it's genetically manipulated and in those cases, you're manipulating things that you have no control over in order to get an outcome, which in most cases with a genetically modified crop, you're doing something very specific. Another example that might be even comparable to malaria is golden rice. You know, you've got this huge problem of young people dying from vitamin A deficiencies in parts of the world, where they don't have access to sufficient vitamin A and a simple production of a crop that varies by a single gene, that allowing production of vitamin A can eliminate the deficiency. So, I just like to get a sense from this group about how you look at, this is another part of this feature of trying to come up with justifiable ways to respond to health disparities and disease disparities, et cetera. So, it's a good point. So, the history is a story of genetically modified crops. I think that debate was lost due to bad communication, bad PR and non-scientific based communication. The environmental group activists won that battle. So, first it was sold as a silver bullet that is going to solve Africa's problem, which is false. I have worked on genetically modified crops. I have advocated on that. So, a lot of what the advocates really sold was false advocates. So, and then the green piece and all the environmental activists came hammering it. A lot of misinformation went into Africa, into others. Yeah, the GM crops are coming. It's going to make you sterile. And, you know, the manhood is a big thing, right? So, all those things. So, it was lost in that debate. And then to make matters worse also, Monsanto was linked to that. So, they are going to control your materials, planting materials and so on. So, there is a significant role for GM crops to play in sustainable production system. But that's not the silver bullet. So, in Africa, in many countries, you know, apart from South Africa and a few countries, and now Kenya also allowed GM crops. That was lost cause. In terms of micro-sporidias, it's not genetically modified. This is naturally existing association that has evolved with mosquitoes for many years. We just happened to stumble on it by luck. And to avoid that type of thing, we are working with communities and with regulators so that they work with us through the process. The process together so that there is no magic to this, there is no modification. This is, we are just amplifying the naturally existing thing. So, we have zero doubts that this will be allowed to be released in a couple of years in, at least in Kenya. And Rwanda also, I had a talk with the president of Rwanda. He's excited by that. He's very happy to be the first to get it released and so on. So, I think how we communicate with the public, how we also work with the policy makers, it makes a difference in the uptake of the technologies that we develop here. Yes, first of all, thanks for two amazing talks. I guess there were several things I wanted to say. First of all, I think it's important that we, although this is a conference about insects, that we sort of lift our gaze and, like you were saying beautifully, think about sort of the environment and the stewardship is for the entire environment. So, we need to find this balance between feeding the people. I mean, we have a right to be here, of course. We need food and that should be a fair, I mean, that goes for everyone, of course. While finding a way to coexist with the entire environment, not just the insects, but everything, and what I thought was so nice in your talk was that you both talked about these examples that were sort of very simple with the push and pull technology and those more fancy tech solutions. And I think regarding the tech solutions and the GMOs and things, like you say, the PR has been a problem, but I think that is partly because there's a risk when big corporations have control of this technology and use it for profit, not necessarily for the good of everyone, like you were both talking about. So, I think this is part of it too. And so, trying to work from sort of taking three steps back and trying to widen our perspective more often, I mean, a circularity, like with the soldier flies, that is such a beautiful principle and we need to try to find more of those solutions that are good in the broad perspective and not sort of be tempted to dive into these small, techno-fancy stuff that is super interesting for some business that deals with it, but might not really be good for the greater picture. And I ask my question. Did either of you want to say anything in response to that? Yeah, I was just going to point out that some of these large corporations have been controlling seed availability far longer than GMOs have been around. Maybe a solution is governmental, that is someone like the UN or the World Health Organization has to be a repository and that those deposits are made available to anyone. Yes. As well as, on the other side, the protection of having a seed bank where the original naturally occurring seeds are... I think there's a place in Norway or something like that. Yes, it's all that. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, I think those are essential to have stashed away a guaranteed way back if something does go wrong, but... So, which has already gone wrong at Svalbard, of course, climate change has meant that many of its faults have been destroyed by melting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just because it really leads really nicely into the question that I wanted to ask, both of you, actually, because you broadly have been talking about food systems. Julie, you mentioned it explicitly and you talked about stewardship. And right before this I mentioned that's something that I use with my network. We talk a lot about stewardship. And what you just said, too, Michael, food systems... I just have to enter this question a little bit so I have context. If you try to look at even a specific commodity, a food system, right, let's take for India, like we'll take rice, and you start to map the stakeholders involved in this food system. You start really generally with the producers. You can do then the processing and the marketing and then the distribution and then the consumers at the end. Within each of those levels, there's so many different stakeholders. There's, like you mentioned, there's the seed companies, the fertilizer companies, the pesticide companies, the farmers, then the transportation services, then the processing stations, then the packaging stations, then the distribution. And you go all the way up to grocery stores and restaurants and then consumers. So when you're thinking about changing that system, you quickly find yourself, as our network has done, in a quagmire of diverse interests, which even government, if I can say, can't even penetrate because it goes far beyond even the regulatory capacity of a government because it's dealing with so many different aspects. So my question to you, and also my hope that you can solve it, so I can go back to India and then we're set, is I really admired what you said. I agree with you on that. I really like this more broader approach of thinking about this. And one of the things that we keep railing against is when you start talking about how to fix these systems, the onus often gets put back on the least empowered stakeholder in that process. So it's the, we have women farmers in India too, right? 87% of the farms in India are smallholder, 70% of those are women, just like in Kenya, where I know as if I work well. Those women are often asked to adopt these technologies or these techniques while the other stakeholders that are much more powerful interests are not able to, and for whatever reason, do that. And so my question for you is, because stewardship also is a little bit of a loaded term. I'm with you on sustainability. I hate that word, but I have to use it all the time. Stewardship also suggests, at least classically, this very much tied to the land sort of concept, and that's usually the least empowered person in this process. How do we, I'll get to my question, how do we foster a stewardship concept that works at this food systems level that puts the onus on these much larger, much more financially salient stakeholders and not on the people that I also care most about who are the people that aren't here at the table and have no voices, and I struggle with this. So I'm hoping that you have some insights also for the people out there to recognize that we have a lot of work to do and that we often put the blame on the people that have no power in this equation. Yeah, I think in going forward, it's all in steps. We need to make sort of dismantling steps in our current systems and start building blocks for a new system. Currently, yeah, everybody's livelihoods is based on our system. Everybody's like those are the jobs that people have to feed their families. And so if we're like, oh, we get rid of these food systems and we don't have jobs. So whatever the new, the bricks we need to lay, it's a value shift. And so when I was talking about stewardship, I was talking about that we who are not traditionally the stewards need to become the stewards and our government needs to figure out how to be stewards. And so with that, whatever that looks like, there should be new jobs, right? There should be new job creation that is literally going out and taking care of the land, renewing habitats or whatever that might be or taking care of these animals or whatever's in the food system. We can't, we don't know what it looks like yet. We, it's an imagined future. But I think we, I don't like to think of it as like a naive blind that, oh, it could be so perfect in the future. But if we don't start making the steps now, then it never can be. And so we just need to start thinking about what that could look like so that we can start finding ways to create new jobs that are more of stewardship on our shoulders instead of the people who have traditionally had to do it. Yeah, so I think that's a good question, but a hard question also. So a food system is a very complex system. It's different from one to the other. So when people talk about food system transformation, they always talk, oh yeah, the global south, those guys, they don't produce enough, they are hungry, so that is a system which needs to be fixed. But in reality, it is a system in the north that needs to be fixed more. As during COVID, I don't know how many people remember, there was a shortage of meat, beef, pork in the United States. So shortage, your shelves were empty, we were watching on TV. So what happened? It's not because there was no production. There was a lot of production actually. The farmers that were producing pork had to cut off. The reason there was shortages there is, I didn't know that the whole meat distribution, pork distribution system in the US was controlled by four companies, three of them were foreign companies. So when the COVID came, the workers got sick and the plants were closed, there was no movement distribution. So I always say food system, food distribution, food security is everybody's issue, not just a developing country, developing things. So I think there has to be a political will and also to really transform. And all these players, as you mentioned, along the way. And one of the things which really bothers me big time is how little we value farmers. During COVID, there was once the vaccines were developed, there was priority list. Priority list of elderly people, the staff, the house workers, the staff, farmers were not in the list. So I like, are you kidding me? Why don't you put them in the list of the priority because we need the food. So in developing countries also, the system has deliberately, the smallholder farmers must put them at poverty level. Poor. So how do we transform actually? The food system, when we don't value the producers who feed us. It is, yeah. Yeah, it's difficult, yeah. Thank you, everyone. We have a question coming from the audience. While food is necessary for nutrition, and we've talked about challenges with malnourishment, for many of us here at least, what we eat has many other benefits. Eating can fulfill kind of sensory satisfaction. There also is cultural connections to the foods we eat. And so we were wondering what your ideas were for how the United States, the dominant culture in the United States, might go about embracing entomophagy. I tried to go where to start, I had like one thought and then the question kept going and I went somewhere else. Sorry. No, no. So one of the things I love when I'm giving examples of insect eating around the world and focusing always on termites mostly because that's what I've studied, is I have these examples of just like women that go out foraging together. And then they find a termite mound and they sit down and they enjoy a bunch of termites and then they take some and they take them home. And so it is, it's a social thing. Food is so much more than nutrition. We don't make our food choices based on nutrition, we make them based on so many more things. And so I think in some ways it's, I love the insect eating parties, right? Like we had the bug bites yesterday and I know a lot of students have baked cookies and brought people together. And so it's difficult because it's a little bit of a, it's novel, right? It's a funny thing together, together in ooh, we're gonna eat bugs. But I think the more we do it just, but the act of doing it is making it more known, more accepted and it's making it social. And so I do think that social component to it is really key to going forward. I really think another major part of sort of entomophagy in our culture and things need to happen is that we need to find ways to make them delicious. We get these freeze dried crickets and they're dry and stuck in your throat and it's not always the best sensory experience. And so challenging ourselves to play with the flavor to treat the insects as an ingredient that contributes to addition. What can you put with it to compliment it, not just hide it? I think that's how a lot of times we treat food and sex here. And so the more brilliant chefs like John Sherman that are doing this, the more we'll start seeing it in more places in delicious ways that we're gonna want to eat. And in Germany, in Berlin, every year the government sponsors a big function. One of them, the major popular function was inviting the public, people from Berlin, all week long to test various insects. So they bring in these big television chefs and because I have participated many years there with it's at least three years. And it is fascinating that all these elderly people coming with a stick and with their grandchildren and telling the grandchildren to taste it is delicious. So I said to one of the elderly couple, this is great, wonderful, that you are encouraging. They said during the war they ate literally dirt, tulips, everything because there was no food. So this one is a delicacy, it's no problem. So I think it is changing mentalities, changing perceptions. So in Kenya, based on our work now and a large 3,000 or so school feeding program, now Kenya has approved fortifying porridges, the maize meal, porridge, ugali, bread, flour, 25% cricket powder to fortify, it's labeled, whatever, baby, winning porridge with termite, 10% termite, labeled. People bite, no problem because they are not seeing the tentacles and everything of that. You don't see the difference actually, you don't taste it but these are packaged nutrients which are really important. I think more of this is going to happen as we know more and as people benefit from the nutrition from the health aspect of it. I mean cereals for breakfast that most people eat in North America and then even in my own home, cereals, cornflakes cereals, imagine if instead of sugar you add the cornflakes made also fortified with insect things. This will be great breakfast for the kids and adults as well. So I think this coming, so it's no problem, I think you will see, it will come, yeah. Yeah, I also wonder if you had some striking statements that have been made about eating insects in the Americas, but I wonder if part of the problem or part of the reaction has to do with the fact that for 10,000 years we've had cultivation, almost everything you eat, I mean sure there are people that will go out and hunt elk or deer but almost everything you eat is something that's supplied as something that's cultivated and so there's a sort of a distrust that builds up generation after generation about something that doesn't come to you now packaged in a grocery store. And perhaps this is part of how you get around that. If you've got things that are showing up in a grocery store and they say, yeah, I'll try it, then these attitudes could change as well. But again, 10,000 years of agriculture and animal husbandry, it seems to me could have a big influence on just what you think you should be eating. Well I would argue it's not 10,000 years of agriculture, it's however many hundreds of years since industrial agriculture because the number one food system around the world is small scale agriculture. And in many of those places pest control is harvesting the insects out of your field and those also being a food resource. So out of your plot of land you have the crops that are gonna provide you nutrition but now you have the insects that were drawn to it that if you can harvest them you've just doubled the output of your plot of land. And so that is a traditional land stewardship of cultivation. It's when we industrialize it and it becomes the industrialization of the chemical pesticides and it really starts demonizing the insects in this relationship but small scale agriculture has kind of had to learn that insects are part of it. You're gonna lose some crops to insects and you can benefit from eating the insects. Right, but we were talking about why is North America? Yeah, so here in North America it's industrial, right? It's the industrial but I think it's, a lot of that is based I think the, we have the industrialization and then from that things start looking more uniform and then we expect things to be uniform. And so part of the success of fast food chains is that you get the exact same hamburger no matter which McDonald's you go to. And so we start expecting that. And so the, yeah, so we just, we don't, we have that package foods and everything. So I think it's all, it's all bundled together where, insects were not a food that got put into our packaged food system. I think Jonathan had a comment and then Shannon had another question. The exact same terrible hamburger wherever you go. But I mean, I'm thinking about, inevitably I think people will end up eating more insects. I suppose what I fear is that they will be eating them indirectly through other animals because the insects will be used to drink animal feed for chickens and pigs being raised in exactly the conditions you presented on your slide. And that's a really serious fear. And I don't know what the solution is, but I suppose part of it is just trying to inform people how inefficient it is to get your protein in that indirect way to be eating these animals that have themselves been fed on other sources of protein. And you have to understand the pathway through which you're getting your protein and think about how you might do it more efficiently. And when you think about it in that way, you see there are different options. One is to eat insects and one is to just eat more plants in the first place. And I tend to by self recommend the eating more plants option. But the main thing is to, the main thing is that all of us are thinking about the pathway through which our protein reaches us and how we can make it more efficient. I think it's also, we also have to take into consideration the differences, right, because it's funny you say that, you know, I guess livestock we're talking about or animals. In India, that's insurance. That's not this protein. It's actually an insurance way for farmers to have money by selling the livestock or eating the livestock in cases where they lose their crop from floods or droughts or the effects of climate change and all the things that are happening. So at the same time as I agree with you to have a plant-based diet, I think this isn't something that we can, I think let's go back to my previous comment. We can't just shift, we can't just say, even though India is a very predominantly vegetarian culture, they do have cows and they do have a lot of pigs and other things as well, goats and things because that is an insurance policy that allows them to sustain their livelihoods. So I think that it's important also to be respectful that what we do here in Minnesota and what we should be doing here in Minnesota, and I really appreciate a Julia talk referencing really, I think us in here in North America, it can't be equal. And I think this is something that I often worry about when we talk about like the sustainable development goals, which is like kind of this thing that we should all do across the world and how it works where segment is, you know, in different African countries has to be very different because you know, the way we live and we make money and we survive is different in different parts of the world. So I do agree with you, but at the same time, we have to be cognizant that we don't all live the same way. I'd like to ask, oh, did you agree, of course. I think we have also to accept that no matter what a certain proportion of the population globally will never eat insects under any circumstance. So we have to accept that as well. So, you know, as you know, I'm from Ethiopia in the 1980s, there was a huge publicized farming in parts of Ethiopia. And so the Western countries send, I remember, a lot of food donation on one of them was like a shipload of hum. So hum in Ethiopia, we are 60% Coptic Christians, or 40% Muslims, neither eat pork. There's no way you are going to eat pork. So people said, are you kidding me? I would rather die to go to heaven without eating pork than prolonged my life by a few days and go to hell. So all that pork just got rotten. So there are portions that under any circumstance are going to eat insects. That's fine also, that's all. Yeah, that's all, okay. Boy, there are so many really great questions here. It is killing us up here. Unfortunately, we want to stay on time, so I'm gonna cut it short. If I had been some of the proof, well, let's just say we should stay on track. So at this point, note there will be a test of the National Emergency System at 1.20, there will be a test of the St. Peter's System, we're pretty sure at 1.00 p.m. Information about food choices, I'm page 23. Some of my colleagues have graciously agreed to convene discussions in the forum today, where the buffet is, and also you can bring your bag lunch there. If you'd like to just sit at a table with some other people and talk, my colleagues said, don't expect me to be an expert on what just happened. I said, no, no, no, you're just a convener. People will talk. Please do join one of my colleagues. The Learning Lab is fantastic. Also, please make your way down to the South End of Campus to see diminutive measures, diminutive messengers in the Schaefer Gallery. And again, we're in the middle of Sukkot, the pilgrimage festival, which marks the end of the agricultural season in Judaism. Please head down to go to the aunt, thou sluggard, but remember that it's now in the Banyur Multi-Faith Center, not in the Sukkot. And Gustavus students, don't forget, 12.30, you have exclusive access to our speakers. So please do head to Beck Hall for those. Other activities you can find in the program, don't forget to recycle compost and store waste in the right place. Please do not smoke anywhere, except maybe mentally. And we will reconvene at 1.45 when we will hear the Gustavus Wind Orchestra. Thank you for this wonderful session. Thanks again to our amazing speakers.