Recently, however, it has been announced that Canada, of all places - where I’ve lived all my life and have never known anyone to eat crickets - will become home to the world's largest cricket farm, newly built in London, Ontario by Aspire Food Group. The company’s CEO, Mohammed Ashour, predicts that North Americans will soon join two billion other people on the planet who, he claims, already eat insects.
Aspire’s enormous spanking-new plant has been subsidized by a million-dollar award (the Hult Prize) received from the United Nations. As well, the company appears to have received $16.8 million from Canadian taxpayers through something called NGen (Next Generation Manufacturing Canada). It looks as though that’s just the first instalment, however; the project total for the “insect protein supply chain in Canada” is shown on NGen’s website as $73 million.
Aspire’s website acknowledges that it also received a third government grant, namely $10 million from STDC (Sustainable Development Technology Canada) in June 2020. SDTC describes itself as “a foundation created by the Government of Canada in 2001 to invest in clean technologies that address climate change, air quality, clean water and clean soil.”
No comments:
Post a Comment