Ottawa’s big bet on the world’s largest cricket farm ran into a simple problem: the ‘yuck factor’

The business of insect rearing was big and fast growing.

In London, Ontario, that promise took shape into Aspire Food Group Canada. Known as the world’s largest cricket farm, it was a 150,000-square-foot, fully automated facility designed to house billions of insects and produce millions of kilograms of protein each year.

Crickets are seen as a low-carbon protein source that requires less agricultural land than traditional livestock and offer the potential to address world food insecurity.

This idea had global support. in 2013, It won the US Hult Prize of $1 millionPresented by former US President Bill Clinton. It attracted investors from the United States, Canada, Ireland, and South Korea, as well as millions of dollars in federal loans and grants.

Facility comes online in 2022Entered Receivership in 2025 And it is not clear how much public money was recovered. The final selling price is secret. It is still sealed by court order.

CBC News contacted all five founders of Aspire Food Group. No one was ready to speak on the record.

Almost a year later, what is clear is this: the collapse of the world’s largest cricket farm was not a fluke – it was the result of a mismatch between the scale of the bets by investors and the market for eating insects that never quite took off.

“The biggest barrier is the yuck factor or disgust,” Sadaf Mollaei, an assistant professor at the University of Guelph whose work focuses on sustainable food systems and consumer behaviour, told CBC News.

‘Yuck Factor’

Mollaei said most North Americans have a deep discomfort when it comes to eating insects and many consumers are reluctant to try it.

That said, even if they are interested, cricket is not cheap. A 454-gram bag of cricket powder can sell for $49.99 – more than premium cuts of beef on a per-pound basis.

“It’s a premium product,” Mollaei said. “It’s not cheap. The selling point has never been the low price, it’s the fact that it’s better for the environment and it’s a healthy product.”

When the industry first took off more than a decade ago, expectations were sky-high. There were expectations for rapid growth and widespread adoption, but in reality, the market in North America never grew as quickly as many had expected.

This put producers in a dilemma: they could not lower prices without more customers and they could not attract more customers without lowering prices.

“The biggest challenge is still the price point,” said Darren Goldin, vice-president of operations at Entomo Farms in Norwood, Ontario, about 30 kilometers east of Peterborough, and an insect farmer.

The company began producing crickets for pet food in 2013 and gradually grew, eventually expanding to approximately 50,000 square feet of production space, about a third the size of Aspire’s London facility.

Court documents show Aspire used thousands of plastic containers or totes to store the crickets.

Goldin said his operation relies on open rooms lined with cardboard “cricket condos,” allowing farmers to see insects, feed and water at a glance.

“You can see very easily what’s going on,” he said. “Compare this to the Aspire model, where everything is in a giant tote and the tote has a lid and sits on a shelf.”

From ‘cricket condo’ to closed system

Goldin said cricket farming requires constant attention to respond quickly to changes, something he said would be difficult in an automated system.

“It’s really like a complex web,” he said, adding that even small changes – such as insect density, food and water access, even temperature – can be affected through the course of an operation, increasing stress on livestock and creating problems that are difficult to control.

“What they (Aspire) were trying to achieve was a very challenging task.”

Court documents show the London facility never came close to operating as planned. A system that worked on a small scale in Texas struggled to translate to Ontario, where differences in environment, ongoing design changes, and problems with equipment contributed to poor performance.

The selling price is a mystery

By June 2024, court filings said, Aspire was operating at about half capacity and needed tens of millions more in financing to try to fix issues to increase production.

Court documents show Farm Credit Canada (FCC) was owed approximately $41 million at the time of receivership. The Crown corporation declined to answer questions about how much of that money has been recovered.

“Out of respect for the court proceedings and customer privacy, we will allow the court-filed documents to speak for themselves,” Eva LaRoche, a senior media relations adviser at the FCC, wrote in an email to CBC News.

Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) said it also provided approximately $8.5 million to Aspire, of which approximately $7.8 million is still outstanding.

Court documents show that the property was sold and the transaction was completed, with the purchase price paid to the court-appointed law firm in charge of selling Aspire’s assets.

In an emailed statement, the City of London said its $1 million back taxes had been paid in full, but it was not clear whether that money came from the sale of proceeds.

The city did not respond to a request for further detail.

The facility was sold to Halali Group Holdings in October 2025, but the price is sealed by court order, meaning it is still unclear how much public money has been lost.

Requests for comment from Halali co-owner Hussein Al-Ali were not returned.