The owner of a two-Michelin-starred restaurant in South Korea has avoided prison time in a highly publicized case surrounding a sorbet dessert topped with ants.
On September 16, the Seoul Western District Court fined the owner of the restaurant 15 million won ($11,000). The owner was identified only as a woman with the last name Kim, and the restaurant was not publicly named. The restaurant’s chef was not charged with any wrongdoing.
Prosecutors had sought a one-year jail term for the owner and a 20 million won ($13,580) fine, citing a profit of 120 million won ($81,470) over the past four years.
The problem isn’t that insects appeared on the menu. Rather, the issue is South Korea’s nuanced food laws, which regulate which insects can go on diners’ plates.
In July, the prosecutor’s office told CNN that the eatery in question has been serving dried ants brought in from the US and Thailand since 2021. They alleged that the restaurant had served about 49,000 ants in 12,200 sherbet dishes.
According to the government, it wasn’t merely the presence of ants in food that was an issue. The Ministry of Food and Drug Safety said investigators “found the ants from this restaurant contained heavy metal levels up to 55 times the maximum limit allowed for other edible insects.”
In making his ruling, the judge noted that there was a potential health risk because heavy metals above the permitted level were found in ants sold by the restaurant. However, when determining the sentence, the judge took into account that the amount of ants used appeared to be less than the amount calculated by prosecutors, and that Kim had no prior criminal record.
Advocates in South Korea and elsewhere have increasingly argued that insects are just as reliable a source of protein as other animal products. Given how easily they are raised and harvested with fewer resources than are needed for more traditional livestock, insects present an effective way to combat climate change.
South Korean cuisine doesn’t frown on insects. Beondegi, for example, is a traditional steamed silkworm pupa snack served by street vendors in paper cups.
But under the country’s Food Sanitation Act, only 10 insect species, including grasshoppers and silkworms, are permitted for human consumption. Serving any other insect — like ants — requires special approval from authorities.
Lawyers representing the restaurant said its chef used ants to add acidity to the dish, without realizing that the recipe he once used in the US and Europe is legally banned in South Korea, local media reported. They also said the restaurant only served ants to about 60% of the customers and that the ants were clearly identified on the menu as part of the dish.
According to a 2013 report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, at least two billion people worldwide already eat bugs every day. The most commonly eaten insect groups globally are ants, beetles, bees, caterpillars, cicadas, crickets, dragonflies, flies, grasshoppers, leaf bugs, locusts, scale insects, termites and wasps, according to the FAO.
The trend has gained traction in Europe and the United States in recent years: a report by Global Market Insights previously projected the US edible insect market would grow to nearly $80 million by 2024, with Europe also logging growth.