Utah’s Nebo School District seeks to “prepare students to succeed in school and life.” Apparently, that preparation now involves eating bugs and developing a dislike of beef.
Fox News Digital reported that a middle school in the district recently provided sixth-grade students with bugs to eat as part of an English assignment concerning the specter of anthropogenic climate change.
What are the details?
Students were instructed to write an essay on March 7 arguing in support of the consumption of insects rather than cows. The assignment’s baked-in presumption was that the mass production and consumption of insect-based foods contra beef will impact weather patterns to a lesser extent.
Children involved in this interactive agitprop were reportedly barred from disagreeing with the premise in their essays. Some students were even given extra credit to consume bugs, which the district admitted to sourcing from a commercial site.
Amanda Wright, a mother of one of the students in the class, challenged the school’s principal over the assignment, noting it had made her daughter feel uncomfortable.
Wright suggested that the assignment was tantamount to “indoctrination” and part of a concerted effort to evangelize on behalf of a “dark climate change religion.”
Following her initial complaint, Wright met with school administrators and recorded the conversation. Alison Hansen, the principal, was recorded saying “the assignment was about finding facts to support” the climate alarmist premise.
“All the evidence has suggested … that we probably should be eating bugs – it’s good for the environment, etc. But I didn’t know that that was an offensive topic,” said Kim Cutler, a teacher at Spring Canyon Middle School not presently listed on its faculty page.
Wright’s daughter similarly captured evidence of climate dogmatism in the classroom.
“How come we can’t state our opinion and write that we shouldn’t be eating bugs?” asked the sixth-grader.
“Because we don’t have any evidence to support it,” said Cutler.
In 2019, Swedish researchers warned in the journal Trends in Ecology & Evolution that by rushing into the mass production and consumption of insects, “we risk creating an industry that replaces one environmental problem with another.”
Whereas Cutler told Wright’s daughter there was no evidence to support not eating bugs, experts at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences suggested there is similarly little evidence to suggest that the mass rearing of insects won’t turn out to be calamitous.
“The emerging insects-as-food industry is increasingly promoted as a sustainable alternative to other animal protein production systems. However, the exact nature of its environmental benefits are uncertain because of the overwhelming lack of knowledge concerning almost every aspect of production: from suitable species, their housing and feed requirements, and potential for accidental release,” said the researchers.
The researchers added, “If ecological sustainability is to be a hallmark of mass insect rearing for consumption, ecologists need to engage in research related to sustainability criteria that are directly linked to key elements of the development of the industry.”
Cutler told the younger Wright, “It’s kind of weird that I gave you a topic where there is only one right answer. We don’t want to eat bugs and it’s gross. But should we be eating bugs? Yeah, because we’re killing the world by raising cows and animals. So we need to, not get rid of cows, but like, try to balance our diet so that not so much of our land is being used to raise cows, ’cause it’s killing the ozone layer.”
When the younger Wright attempted to raise an objection, Cutler said, “There’s only one right answer to this essay. And it’s that Americans should be eating bugs. Everyone in the world is eating them, it’s healthy for the environment and there’s just, there’s only one right answer.”
Fox News Digital indicated that Cutler later explained that the district had pushed bug-eating advocacy in its training.
The district admitted in a statement that extra credit had been offered in exchange for kids eating bugs and noted that upon Wright expressing concern, ‘The student was offered another topic of the student’s choice. Remember this particular assignment is about finding facts versus opinions to support writing an argumentative essay.”
Bugging out
TheBlaze has previously reported on the joint effort by climate alarmists and technocrats to preclude the masses from consuming real meat as part of a broader campaign to combat the specter of climate change.
The Guardian ran an op-ed in 2018 claiming, “Reducing our meat intake is crucial to avoiding climate breakdown, since food production accounts for about a quarter of all human-related greenhouse gas emissions, and is predicted to rise. In western countries, this means eating 90% less beef and five times as many beans and pulses.”
A 2017 review published in the journal Agronomy for Sustainable Development suggested that rather than meat, humans could instead try eating weeds, micro-algae, and bugs.
The World Economic Forum ran an article in February 2022 touting bugs as “an excellent alternative source of protein” and a way to “significantly reduce our carbon footprint.” The WEF author went so far as to suggest that insects are “part of a virtuous eco-cycle.”
When speaking recently at the WEF, Siemens AG chairman Jim Hagemann similarly called on people to stop eating meat to curb the specter of anthropogenic climate change.
“If a billion people stop eating meat, I tell you, it has a big impact. Not only does it have a big impact on the current food system, but it will also inspire innovation of food systems,” Hagemann told a crowd of technocrats in Davos, Switzerland.
Extra to foisting a bug diet on the population, alarmists have recommended lab-grown cancer-based synthetic meat as an alternative to eating real beef.
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