PERSPECTIVE article
Front. Sustain. Food Syst.
Sec. Agro-Food Safety
This article is part of the Research TopicWorld Food Day 2025: Current challenges and future perspectives on food security in a changing worldView all articles
Towards a Regional Regulatory Framework for Edible Insects in Latin America: Opportunities and Challenges
Provisionally accepted
- 1Universidad San Francisco de Quito, Quito, Ecuador
- 2Purdue University, West Lafayette, United States
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
EEdible insects are increasingly recognized as sustainable protein sources capable of contributing to global food security and climate-aligned dietary transitions. However, their integration into formal food systems depends not only on techno-functional validation but, critically, on regulatory frameworks that ensure safety, traceability, and consumer confidence. While Europe and parts of Asia have established regulatory mechanisms, Latin America—despite its high biocultural diversity and entomophagy heritage—remains largely excluded from these governance structures, resulting in informality, limited investment, and marginalization from high-value markets. This Perspective aims to stimulate dialogue on how Latin America might design context-sensitive governance pathways for edible insects. It argues that regulation, when conceived as a tool for inclusion and sovereignty rather than mere control, can articulate four complementary pillars: science-based safety standards, cultural recognition, digital traceability, and regional cooperation. A practical roadmap is proposed to guide regulatory evolution through phased implementation—from baseline assessment and multi-stakeholder engagement to the establishment of adaptable, science-based standards and continuous regulatory improvement. Positioning edible insect governance within broader sustainability and food sovereignty agendas could enable Latin America to shift from being a passive biodiversity provider to an active normative contributor in global food policy. Conversely, regulatory inertia risks deepening exclusion and allowing external standards to dictate the future of the region’s biocultural resources. By framing regulation as a space for negotiated governance rather than top-down enforcement, this discussion opens a strategic conversation toward inclusive, culturally grounded, and future-oriented insect policy frameworks.
Keywords: Edible insects, regulation, food sovereignty, traceability, Regional governance, Food Safety
Received: 23 Oct 2025; Accepted: 10 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Álvarez-Suárez and Liceaga. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: José M. Álvarez-Suárez, jalvarez@usfq.edu.ec
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.