EU opens supermarket doors to larvae meal

Brussels – Europe’s “novel food” revolution continues: after recent years’ approval of migratory locust meal, lesser mealworms, and house crickets, Brussels is opening the doors of EU supermarkets to whole powdered larvae of Tenebrio molitor (the so-called yellow mealworms). Today’s (Jan. 20) green light from the European Commission comes just days after a failed attempt by right-wing groups in the EU Parliament to call into question the addition of yellow grubs to EU novel foods.

The amendment to the EU implementing regulation (2017/2470) authorizes the placing on the market of UV-treated whole Tenebrio molitor larvae powder, adding it to the list of novel foods (any food that was not consumed “in a relevant way before May 1997 on the Continent”). The authorization will take effect twenty days after publication in the Official Journal of the European Union: from that day and for five years, only the French company Nutri’Earth will be allowed to place the yellow grub meal on the market “unless a subsequent applicant obtains an authorization for such novel food.”

Nutri’Earth applied to Brussels more than five years ago. In the summer of 2023, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) issued a scientific opinion: the UV-treated Tenebrio molitor whole larvae powder is “safe under the proposed conditions and levels of use.” That is, it can be used in “bread and rolls, cakes, pasta products, processed potato products, cheese and dairy products, and fruit and vegetable compotes intended for the general population.” 

Last January 15, the European Parliament’s Environment, Public Health and Safety (ENVI) committee rejected by 39 votes against, 32 in favour and 6 abstentions a motion submitted by French conservative Laurence Trochu to block the approval of yellow grub meal. On the sidelines of the vote, Lega MEP and ENVI committee member Silvia Sardone had attacked the left, guilty in her view of “putting the interests of multinationals before those of consumers and food safety.”

In fact, the European Commission itself has markedly accelerated the incorporation of edible insects into European food culture as alternative protein sources. A breakthrough triggered by a simple equation: the increasing demand for food in the face of decreasing agri-food yields. There are over a dozen applications on EFSA’s table for evaluating food derived from edible insects. Among them, foods such as black soldier fly meal (Hermetia illucens larvae) whole, blanched, and dried, the nest of drones of honey bees (Apis mellifera male pupae), the whole powder of house cricket (Acheta domesticus), protein-rich flour from fresh larvae of flour moths (Tenebrio molitor), protein powders from the larvae of the lesser flour worm (Alphitobius diaperinus) are already at the risk assessment stage. The timeframe required for the EFSA experts to formulate their verdict is not known at this time.