字幕表 動画を再生する
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Okay, I'm going to show you
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again something about our diets.
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And I would like to know what the audience is.
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And so who of you ever ate insects?
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That's quite a lot.
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(Laughter)
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But still, you're not representing
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the overall population of the Earth.
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(Laughter)
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Because there's 80 percent out there that really eats insects.
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But this is quite good.
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Why not eat insects? Well first, what are insects?
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Insects are animals that walk around on six legs.
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And here you see just a selection.
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There's six million species of insects on this planet,
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six million species.
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There's a few hundreds of mammals --
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six million species of insects.
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In fact, if we count all the individual organisms,
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we would come at much larger numbers.
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In fact, of all animals on Earth,
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of all animal species,
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80 percent walks on six legs.
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But if we would count all the individuals,
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and take an average weight of them,
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it would amount to something like 200 to 2,000 kg.
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for each of you and me on Earth.
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That means that in terms of biomass
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insects are more abundant than we are.
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And we're not on a planet of men,
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but we're on a planet of insects.
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Insects are not only there in nature,
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but they also are involved in our economy,
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usually without us knowing.
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There was an estimation,
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a conservative estimation, a couple of years ago
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that the U.S. economy
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benefited by 57 billion
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dollars per year.
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It's a number -- very large --
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a contribution to the economy of the United States for free.
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And so I looked up what the economy was paying
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for the war in Iraq
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in the same year.
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It was 80 billion U.S. dollars.
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Well we know that that
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was not a cheap war.
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So insects, just for free,
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contribute to the economy of the United States
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with about the same order of magnitude
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just for free, without everyone knowing.
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And not only in the States,
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but in any country, in any economy.
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What do they do?
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They remove dung, they pollinate our crops.
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A third of all the fruits that we eat
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are all a result
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of insects taking care of the reproduction of plants.
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They control pests.
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And they're food for animals.
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They're at the start of food chains.
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Small animals eat insects.
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Even larger animals eat insects.
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But the small animals that eat insects
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are being eaten by larger animals,
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still larger animals.
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And at the end of the food chain, we are eating them as well.
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There's quite a lot of people that are eating insects.
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And here you see me
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in a small, provincial town in China, Lijiang --
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about two million inhabitants.
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If you go out for dinner, like in a fish restaurant,
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where you can select which fish you want to eat,
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you can select which insects you would like to eat.
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And they prepare it in a wonderful way.
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And here you see me enjoying a meal
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with caterpillars, locusts,
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bee, [unclear] delicacies.
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And you can eat something new everyday.
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There's more than 1,000 species of insects
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that are being eaten all around the globe.
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That's quite a bit more
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than just a few mammals that we're eating,
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like a cow or a pig
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or a sheep.
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More than 1,000 species --
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an enormous variety.
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And now you may think, okay,
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in this provincial town in China they're doing that, but not us.
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Well we've seen already that quite some of you
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already ate insects maybe occasionally.
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But I can tell you that everyone of you
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is eating insects, without any exception.
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You're eating at least
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500 grams per year.
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What are you eating?
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Tomato soup, peanut butter,
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chocolate, noodles --
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any processed food that you're eating
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contains insects,
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because insects are here all around us,
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and when they're out there in nature
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they're also in our crops.
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Some fruits get some insect damage.
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Those are the fruits, if they're tomato,
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that go to the tomato soup.
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If they don't have any damage, they go to the grocery.
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And that's your view of a tomato.
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But there's tomatoes that end up in a soup.
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And as long as they meet
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the requirements of the food agency,
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there can be all kinds of things in there,
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no problem.
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In fact, why would we put these balls in the soup,
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there's meat in there anyway?
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(Laughter)
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In fact, all our processed foods
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contain more proteins
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than we would be aware of.
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So anything is a protein source already.
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Now you may say,
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"Okay, so we're eating 500 grams just by accident."
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We're even doing this on purpose
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in a lot of food items that we have.
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I have only two items
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here on the slide --
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pink cookies or surimi sticks
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or, if you like, Campari.
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A lot of our food products that are of a red color
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are dyed with a natural dye.
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The surimi sticks
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is crab meat, or is being sold as crab meat,
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is white fish
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that's being dyed with cochineal.
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Cochineal is a product
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of an insect that lives off the cacti.
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It's being produced in large amounts,
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150 to 180 metric tons per year,
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in the Canary Islands in Peru,
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and it's big business.
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One gram of cochineal
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costs about 30 euros.
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One gram of gold
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is 30 euros.
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So it's a very precious thing
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that we're using to dye our foods.
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Now the situation in the world is going to change,
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for you and me, for everyone on this Earth.
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The human population is growing very rapidly
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and is growing exponentially.
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Where at the moment we have
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something between six and seven billion people,
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it will grow to about nine billion
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in 2050.
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That means that we have a lot more mouths to feed.
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And this is something that worries more and more people.
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There was an FAO conference last October
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that was completely devoted to this.
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How are we going to feed this world?
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And if you look at the figures up there,
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it says that we have a third more mouths to feed,
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but we need agricultural production increase
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of 70 percent.
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And that's especially because this world population
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in increasing,
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and it's increasing, not only in numbers,
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but we're also getting wealthier,
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and anyone that gets wealthier starts to eat more
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and also starts to eat more meat.
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And meat, in fact, is something
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that costs a lot
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of our agricultural production.
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Our diet consists for some part of animal proteins,
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and at the moment, most of us here
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get it from livestock,
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from fish, from game.
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And we eat quite a lot of it.
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In the Developed World it's on average
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80 kg. per person per year,
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which goes up to 120
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in the United States
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and a bit lower in some other countries,
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but on average 80 kg.
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per person per year.
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In the Developing World it's much lower.
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It's 25 kg. per person per year.
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But it's increasing enormously.
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In China in the last 20 years,
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it increased from 20 to 50,
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and it's still increasing.
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So if a third of the world population
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is going to increase its meat consumption
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from 25 to 80 on average,
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and a third of the world population
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is living in China and in India,
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we're having an enormous demand on meat.
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And of course, we are not there to say,
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it's only for us, it's not for them.
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They have the same share that we have.
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Now to start with, I should say
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that we are eating way too much meat
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in the Western world.
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We could do with much, much less --
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and I know, I've been a vegetarian for a long time.
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And you can easily do without anything.
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You'll get proteins in any kind of food anyway.
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But then there's a lot of problems
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that come with meat production,
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and we're being faced with that more and more often.
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The first problem that we're facing is human health.
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Pigs are quite like us.
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They're even models in medicine.
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And we can even transplant organs from a pig to a human.
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That means that pigs also share diseases with us.
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And a pig disease,
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a pig virus, and a human virus
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can both proliferate.
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And because of their kind of reproduction,
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they can combine and produce a new virus.
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This has happened in The Netherlands in the 1990's
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during the classical swine fever outbreak.
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You get a new disease that can be deadly.
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We eat insects -- they're so distantly related from us,
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that this doesn't happen.
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So that's one point for insects.
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(Laughter)
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And there's the conversion factor.
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You take 10 kg. of feed,
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you can get one kg. of beef,
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but you can get nine kg. of locust meat.
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So if you would be an entrepreneur,
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what would you do?
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With 10 kg. of input,
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you can get either one or nine kg. of output.
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So far we're taking
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the one, or up to five kg. of output.
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We're not taking the bonus yet.
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We're not taking the nine kg. of output yet.
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So that's two points for insects.
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(Laughter)
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And there's the environment.
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If we take 10 kg. of food --
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(Laughter)
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and it results in one kilogram of beef,
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the other nine kg. are waste,
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and a lot of that is manure.
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If you produce insects, you have less manure
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per kg. of meat that you produce.
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So less waste.
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Furthermore, per kg. of manure,
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you have much, much less ammonia
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and fewer greenhouse gases
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when you have insect manure
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than when you have cow manure.
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So you have less waste,
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and the waste that you have is not as environmental malign
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as it is with cow dung.
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So that's three points for insects.
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(Laughter)
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Now there's a big "if" of course,
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and it is if insects produce meat
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that is of good quality.