[Wasagdu] Healthy dog treats

[Becky Frankeberger]

Not Ready To Eat Crickets? Try Feeding Them To Your Dog We can all save the
planet by eating bugs instead of meat.  But test it on your dog, first.

 

 

 

 

 

We should probably all be eating bugs.  Insects have as much 

protein-and more vitamins and minerals-than beef or chicken, and 

a bug farm takes a fraction of the resources of say, raising 

cattle.  Still, despite a quickly growing market, most Americans 

may still not quite be willing to swap out steak for ground-up 

crickets.  So one new startup is beginning with a less squeamish 

consumer: dogs.

  Entobento, a San Diego-based company, makes dog treats with 

healthy, human-grade ingredients like peanut butter, eggs, and 

honey.  It's designed to be food that dogs want to eat as much as 

the standard processed products that the company founders call 

"doggy junk food." But the key to their recipe is the insects.

 

 

 

"Our goal is to push entomophagy [eating insects] forward, and 

the way we're doing that is by focusing on dogs first," says 

Kaison Tanabe, one of the founders of Entobento.

  Tanabe and his five co-founders, who met at a Startup Weekend 

competition last year, were inspired by a 2013 U.N.  report that 

lays out the long list of benefits of shifting agriculture to 

insects.  Producing a pound of beef takes 2,000 times more water 

than a pound of crickets, far more land and energy, and emits 100 

times more greenhouse gases.  As the global population grows, 

replacing some traditional meat with insects could be a way to 

provide more sustainable nutrition to the world.

  The extent to which pets adopting a food would ever help 

convince humans to eat the same thing isn't exactly clear.  But 

Entobento wanted to bring a product to market that had the widest 

reach.  "It seemed like a lot of people were willing to consider 

the idea, but there's such a large psychological barrier," Tanabe 

says.  "We decided to take a look at dogs."

 

 

 

The company wants to work with pet food regulators to start using 

cricket flour in dog food, but until they clear that hurdle, 

they're focused on treats.  They've spent the last year coming up 

with a recipe that dogs like, and they're crowdfunding production 

on Kickstarter.

  They're not the only startup with the idea: BugBites, another 

startup, recently ran a Kickstarter with a different version of 

cricket treats.

  "If there's no competition, that's a bad sign," says Tanabe.  

"But if there's some competition, that's a great sign.  We really 

like that they're there...one thing that's pretty interesting 

about the entomophagy industry is how incredibly collaborative it 

is.  The mentality is that any success in the industry is a 

success for everybody."

 

 

Becky Frankeberger

Butterfly Knitting

-           Ponchos

-           Afghans

-           Shawls

-           Custom Knitting

360-426-8389

becky at butterflyknitting.com

 

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