The bread, made from flour ground from dried crickets as well as wheat flour and seeds, contains more protein than normal wheat bread. Each loaf contains about 70 crickets and costs 3.99 euros (C$6.01), compared with two to three euros for a regular wheat loaf.

“It offers consumers with a good protein source and also gives them an easy way to familiarize themselves with insect-based food,” said Juhani Sibakov, head of innovation at Fazer Bakeries.

The demand to find more food sources and a desire to treat animals more humanely have raised interest in using insects as a protein source in several Western countries.

In November, Finland joined five other European countries — Britain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria and Denmark — in allowing insects to be raised and marketed for food use.

Sibakov said Fazer had developed the bread since last summer. It had to wait for legislation to be passed in Finland for the launch.

“I don’t taste the difference… It tastes like bread,” said Sara Koivisto, a student from Helsinki after trying the new product.

Due to a limited supply of crickets, the insect-bread will initially only be sold in 11 Fazer bakery stores located in Helsinki region hypermarkets, but the company plans to offer it in all 47 of its stores by next year.

The company buys its cricket flour from the Netherlands, but said it was also looking for local suppliers.

Fazer, a family business with sales of about 1.6 billion euros last year, did not give a sales target for the product.

Insect-eating, or entomophagy, is common in much of the world. The United Nations estimated last year that at least two billion people eat insects and more than 1,900 species have been used for food.

In Western countries, edible bugs are gaining traction in niche markets, particularly among those seeking a gluten-free diet or wanting to protect the environment because farming insects uses less land, water and feed than animal husbandry.

— Tuomas Forsell is a Reuters correspondent based in Helsinki.

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A transatlantic row over possible risks to human health has prompted investigations by congressional committees in the U.S., and in Europe has forced a delay to a re-licensing decision for Roundup.

Weighing in on the controversy, the EU body which regulates chemicals and biocides said it had considered extensive scientific data.

“This conclusion was based both on the human evidence and the weight of the evidence of all the animal studies reviewed,” Tim Bowmer, chairman of ECHA’s committee for risk assessment, said in an online briefing.

The European Commission said it expected to restart talks with member states on re-approving the use of glyphosate in herbicides after receiving the formal opinion from ECHA, which is expected by August.

A decision would be taken within six months after that or by the end of 2017 at “at the latest,” a Commission spokesman said.

Pending the results of the study, the EU granted an 18-month extension last summer of its approval for the weed killer after a proposal for full licence renewal met opposition from member states and campaign groups.

Accusing EU nations of hiding behind Brussels and failing to take an open stance on controversial issues such as glyphosate and genetically modified organisms (GMOs), the Commission also proposed changes to its decision-making process.

“It’s up to the Commission now,” said Jack de Bruijn, ECHA’s director of risk management. “We are confident that indeed we have no issue at all in terms of the transparency and independence of this opinion.”

While the WHO’s cancer agency, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), classifies glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic,” many other government regulators, including the U.S., see the weed killer as unlikely to pose a cancer risk to humans.

The European Food Safety Authority’s (EFSA), which has found that glyphosate is “unlikely to pose a carcinogenic hazard to humans,” welcomed ECHA’s opinion on Wednesday, as did lobby groups for farmers, who make wide use of products containing glyphosate.

But Greenpeace’s Franziska Achterberg said in a statement: “The data vastly exceeds what’s legally necessary for the EU to ban glyphosate, but ECHA has looked the other way.”

According to data published by IARC, glyphosate was registered in over 130 countries as of 2010 and is one of the world’s most heavily used weed killers.

Analysts have estimated that Monsanto could lose out on up to US$100 million of sales if glyphosate were banned in Europe.

— Reporting for Reuters by Jussi Rosendahl and Tuomas Forsell; additional reporting for Reuters by Kate Kelland in London and Alissa de Carbonnel in Brussels.

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