Why is locust kosher

As a result, the Reform youth movement, RSY-Netzer, caters vegetarian on its camps and vegan where possible. As the world tries to cope with a population expected to rise to nine billion by it may be that including locusts and similar in our diet will be part of the solution to keeping us all fed and healthy. Thank you for helping to make Jewish News the leading source of news and opinion for the UK Jewish community.

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Locusts are also mentioned in the Bible as being kosher for Jews to eat, with some communities maintaining the tradition of eating insects down through the 20th century.

One Israeli start-up is joining the growing ranks of companies seeking to develop viable ways to raise edible insects for an increasingly ravenous world. Elifelet is an unlikely place for a food revolution. The quiet farming community of people in the hills north of the Sea of Galilee seems a long way from Tel Aviv skyscrapers of Start-up Nation. The company is forging ahead to expand production to meet burgeoning demand. Bring on the Locusts: An Israeli start-up is seeking to develop viable ways to raise edible insects for an increasingly ravenous world.

Construction workers were busy as bees on Sunday converting disused chicken coops into climate-controlled incubation and growth chambers for hundreds of thousands of Locusta migratoria — the African migratory locust. Once completed, the building will be capable of turning out 10 tons of edible locusts per year. Hargol has caught the attention of major food corporations worldwide and last month it took first prize in an Israeli startup award competition. It has drawn investors from Israel and abroad and aims to have a fully operational industrial farm up and running by mid A gentle munching pervades the humid white-walled chamber where cage upon cage of locusts are stacked.

Locusts are high in protein, and also zinc and iron - minerals which many people around the world are lacking - and they emit very little in the way of greenhouse gases.

But van Huis says it's impossible to eat your way out of a locust invasion. For one thing - there are simply too many. And in a country like Israel, where they are being sprayed very heavily with insecticide, they could be contaminated, and he would advise against eating them. Although locusts are clearly described in the Torah as being kosher, there is much discussion in Israel, says Rabbi Ari Zivotofsky, as to whether all Jews can eat them - or only those Jews who have a tradition of eating them principally Yemenite Jews and those from North Africa.

Zivotofsky believes the only reason that Ashkenazi Jews don't have the tradition of eating locusts is because it's extremely rare to get locusts in Europe, so he has no problem - in principle, at least - with eating them. He organises special dinners encouraging Israelis to widen their horizons and try traditional foods that, although kosher, are rarely eaten. He's had locust on the menu before and it proved a hit. His children certainly enjoyed their own culinary creations, particularly the breaded specimens.

You can follow the Magazine on Twitter and on Facebook. Eucalyptus restaurant Jerusalem. Food Insects Newsletter. Israel is dealing with a locust emergency.

They are showing little sign of letting up. Moshe Basson and one of his locust creations. To be safe, some rabbis want to end this custom of locust munching. All halakhic Jewish legal literature deals with eating locusts, from the Mishnah oral Jewish laws through the Talmud, Rashi and Maimonides to the Jewish code of laws and is still controversial.

Halakhic rulers throughout the generations were concerned over the uncertainty that the biblical locust is indeed the flying insect that destroys crops. There are marked external signs that the locust is kosher four legs, four wings, wings covering most of its body and two back legs to spring from. The halakhic controversy over locust-eating began among European editors of the authoritative work of legal Judaism, Shulchan Aruch, in the 17th century. Revach says Yosef cannot rule on the issue without examining the specific creatures that landed in the south this week.