I can sympathize with yr desire to Save the Mantids, P.J., but I'm not sure what you mean by an American "locust", since the only US species to earn that name, the Rocky Mountain Locust, Schistocerca americana, kicked the bucket, species wise, about a hundred years ago. Good thing too! Locusts are swarmers, and the winged form can blacken the skies with their numbers and devour crops at an amazing rate! Generally, the regulatory APHID folks in the U.S. are pretty laisser faire, but if someone started cultivating imported locusts for culture, their establishment would be surrounded by a SWAT team in no time!
Still, it would seem that large crix would fill the bill much more inexpensively and easily than mantids. Make up a pin, with one of yr great pix, saying "Say NO to Food Mantids!" and I'll be happy to buy a few from you!
I did some web browsing after I wrote the above and wonder if by "locusts" you don't mean short horned grasshoppers or even grassoppers in general. Crickets are more readily produced than grasshoppers, and there is nowhere that I can find that sells them (unless you mean the women's shoes), but they are easily caught with a sweep net if you live in the right area like I do. Unless you capture them in someone's yard (garden), they are not likely to be contaminated, and one quick way to tell an uncntaminated one with a contaminated one is that the second is usually dead!
