This past January at the Specialty Food Association’s (SFA’s) Winter Fancy Food Show, three of our members were offering innovative products derived from insect protein. Yes, you read that correctly. Crickets, to be exact. Hard as it may be for the average American to believe, there’s a nascent movement taking hold, featuring insects as the new sustainable protein source. The bug is catching on — in fact, a $1.2 billion insect protein industry is projected for North America by 2023, growing at 24%.

Research from the UN as well as many global cultures holds that insects contain high-quality protein, vitamins, and amino acids — nutrients that we need. As a farmed product, insects also happen to be much more environmentally friendly than animals — cattle need six times more feed than crickets — and they can even be fed organic waste without impacting the quality of the end product. It certainly makes sense to pursue insects as a viable nutrition source, as some parts of the world have for millennia.

The regulatory environment around insect protein, which is still quite unclear, will need to step up. According to the Food and Drug Administration’s regulatory code, insects are considered food if that is their intended use. I’m following regulation development because so much of it is dependent on shifting definitions. Think of the current brouhaha around the term “milk.” The U.S. dairy lobby has stepped in and made the claim that milk can only come from a mammal — so you can no longer call a beverage made from soy “soy milk.” So, is cricket flour actually “flour” or just ground cricket? Farming standards for insects are also likely to come under regulatory scrutiny, but we already know that in a well-monitored, indoor environment it is possible to produce high-quality, insect-based food consistently in all seasons.

At SFA, we see that insects can be a viable innovation in protein. The data we collect on people’s eating habits and trends point to continuing changes in American tastes. Mirroring the migration to plant-based foods, there is a slowly growing migration to alternative proteins. It may not be as fast as what happened with kale and then cauliflower, but insect protein is on our radar and is beginning to clear the horizon.

Three of our member food manufacturing companies are successfully at the forefront of the trend here in the U.S.: Aspire Food Group, Chirp Chips and Don Bugito. They have developed and packaged products like peanut-cricket protein bars, BBQ cricket chips and dark chocolate covered crickets. These products are marketed — using online and social media to put across an unassailable message of health and globalization — as gluten free, sustainable and a great source of energy-rich protein. The companies are each, in their own way, out to save the world. As all retailers know, such a sense of purpose has become a must-have if a product is going to resonate with today’s consumers. These early producers are meeting a need on the front end, and some consumers are clearly intrigued by these new products.

Where is the U.S. with mass marketing insect protein products? While right now insect protein is the province of alternative foodservice channels — think bar food, snack food meze — grocers and mass market retailers are not far behind. Once insect protein crosses over into consumer packaged goods, finds its way onto the shelves, expands into several flavors and varieties … it will go mainstream. Canadian grocer Loblaw Cos. has already released cricket protein products under its own private label. Eventually — the timing is uncertain — we will see insect products make their way into daily life and onto retail shelves here in America. Right now, we’re still in the very early stages of ­adoption.

So, what will catalyze the insect protein market from just another food fad to a widely marketed and sought-after product? We believe that interest will start small and specialized, as it is beginning to do now, but will spread more widely through early adopters spreading the word via social media. For mass market retailers, this may be a game of Follow the Leader — if one major chain in the U.S. decides to stock cricket protein products, everyone will fall in line. And don’t forget, crickets bring good luck.

Food industry veteran and advocate Phil Kafarakis is president of the Specialty Food Association, an umbrella organization representing some 3,800 innovative, entrepreneurial member companies in the food and beverage industry. He can be reached at [email protected] and followed at @PresidentSFA.