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Photo Credit: iStock <\/p>\n Photo Credit: iStock <\/p>\n
A hyped cricket farming operation once expected to make insect protein a mainstream sensation has fallen apart, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation<\/a> reported, with one primary reason cited for the operation’s protracted downfall.<\/p>\n Aspire Food Group Canada’s cricket farm was purportedly the world’s largest, “a 150,000-square-foot, fully automated facility designed to house billions of insects and produce millions of kilograms of protein each year,” according to the CBC.<\/p>\n In August 2017, Fast Company<\/a> published a glowing profile of the startup, noting that Aspire planned to open a facility 10 times larger than the first one, a scale its founders deemed necessary to establish cricket as a viable protein option.<\/p>\n At the time, the outlet observed that to unseat primary animal-sourced proteins like beef and “fulfill its sustainable promise,” cricket protein would have to be more affordable and more widely available in North American markets.<\/p>\n Price was an early challenge, Aspire CEO Mohammed Ashour explained.<\/p>\n “It’s very expensive. A pound of cricket protein powder right now at wholesale sells for approximately $20. That’s not because of an artificial, significantly inflated gross margin \u2014 that’s simply because the cost of production is very high,” Ashour said, per Fast Company.<\/p>\n As the CBC’s reporting revealed, cricket protein’s high cost was a trade-off: It had a lower environmental cost<\/a> than chicken or beef.<\/p>\n Raising cattle for beef takes an immense toll on the planet in terms of both carbon pollution and deforestation, and beef has become prohibitively expensive in recent years.<\/p>\n But cost didn’t seem to be what brought down the once-promising startup, which was awarded the prestigious Hult Prize in 2013 and then received “tens of millions of dollars in federal loans and grants,” per the CBC.<\/p>\n University of Guelph assistant professor Sadaf Mollaei is an expert on sustainable food systems, and she spoke to the CBC about the surprisingly simple reason the project fell apart: The idea of eating crickets, even in powdered form, failed to catch on.<\/p>\n “The biggest barrier is the yuck factor or the disgust,” Mollaei said of a product that can retail for up to 49.99 Canadian dollars ($35.89) per pound.<\/p>\n “It’s a premium product. It’s not cheaper. The selling point has never been a lower price; it’s the fact it’s better for the environment, and it’s a healthy product,” Mollaei added.<\/p>\n Aspire’s facility, which opened in 2022, entered receivership<\/a> in 2025, with roughly 41.5 million Canadian dollars in debt<\/a> ($29.8 million). Insect farmer Darren Goldin told the CBC that Aspire faced an uphill battle with scale and cost from the outset.<\/p>\n “What they were trying to accomplish was a very, very challenging task,” Goldin acknowledged.<\/p>\n Get TCD’s free newsletters<\/a> for easy tips to save more, waste less, and make smarter choices \u2014 and earn up to $5,000 toward clean upgrades in TCD’s exclusive Rewards Club<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Photo Credit: iStock A hyped cricket farming operation once expected to make insect protein a mainstream sensation has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":588138,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,287493,740,287496,287494,287495,34987,287498,287497,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-588137","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cricket","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-canadian-broadcasting-corporation","11":"tag-cricket","12":"tag-cricket-farm","13":"tag-cricket-protein","14":"tag-cricket-protein-powder","15":"tag-fast-company","16":"tag-food-group-canada","17":"tag-insect-protein","18":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=588137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588137\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/588138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=588137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=588137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=588137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}