Utah teacher's climate assignment encouraging kids to eat bugs sparks backlash
Will Harris, a Georgia cattleman, responds to a Utah teacher's assignment claiming that cows are killing the planet while encouraging students to eat bugs.
A teacher from Utah's Nebo School district went viral for doling out an extra credit assignment encouraging students to eat insects for a lesson on climate change and claiming that doing so would alleviate some of the harm done by raising cattle and eating beef, according to information obtained by Fox News Digital.
"Should we be eating bugs?" teacher Kim Cutler asked in a video that aired Sunday on "Fox & Friends Weekend." "Yeah, because we're killing the world by raising cows and animals," she continued.
Will Harris, a fourth-generation Georgia cattleman, pushed back against the notion.
UTAH SCHOOL GIVES KIDS ‘DISGUSTING’ INSECTS TO EAT IN CLASS FOR CLIMATE ASSIGNMENT ON COWS KILLING EARTH
"It's an example of a fanatic attempting to force her interpretation of science onto someone under her control," he told co-host Rachel Campos-Duffy. "It's a presupposition and is completely improper."
A Utah teacher came under fire for assigning an extra credit task to kids, encouraging them to eat bugs for protein. (Middle School | Fox News Digital)
Harris said he agrees with environmental scientists' consensus that industrialized cattle production is wreaking havoc on the environment, but said the Utah teacher's blanket remarks about cattle "killing the planet" are overreaching.
"For her to extrapolate that, that all cattle production is harmful, is absolutely a fanatical embracement of junk science."
A Utah middle school student said her teacher offered extra credit to students for eating bugs and claimed the teacher encouraged her to eat a grasshopper. (Reuters)
The contentious climate change assignment instructed sixth graders to write an argumentative essay about the benefits of eating insects for protein instead of cattle since cows notoriously, according to the climate agenda, destroy the ozone layer by releasing methane gas.
Students were allegedly not permitted to take a different stance in their essays, however.
"[My daughter] wasn't given an option to give an argument," concerned mom Amanda Wright said of the essay during a meeting with administrators.
School district administrators defended the decision by claiming the assignment asked students to provide evidence supporting the viability of eating insects to save the planet.
"How come we can't state our opinion and write that we shouldn't be eating bugs?" Wright asked teacher Kim Cutler.
Cutler responded, "Because we don't have any evidence to support it."
Still, Harris said the argument fails to consider other types of farming, including grassfed farming, that focus more on the land and animal than a more industrialized approach.
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As the former president of the American Grassfed Association in the 1990s, Harris transitioned his family farm from industrialized farming to grassfed farming.
"I am the fourth generation to manage this farm, and those four generations of 150 years have gone full cycle from a production model that was very focused on the animals, the land and the community to, under my father's watch and my early watch, a very industrial commodity, a centralized approach and now back to production models based on doing the right thing for the land, the animals and the community," he said.
Harris maintained nutrition should be a personal choice, citing evidence that other cultures choose to eat insects.
Fox News' Hannah Grossman contributed to this report.
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