Startups Are Using Insect Larvae To Produce Protein-Rich Ingredients For Animals (nytimes.com) 57
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: AgriProtein is among a small number of start-ups that are using insect larvae to produce protein-rich ingredients for animal feed. This nascent industry could help feed a growing human population in a way that's less damaging to the environment. Protix opened one of the world's largest insect farms in June in the Netherlands, while other producers, including Enviroflight, Ynsect and AgriProtein, are building large facilities to turn billions of insects into animal protein every month. Large farming companies like Cargill and Wilbur-Ellis are also investing in this sector. By breeding insects in vertical farms, these companies can produce large amounts of feed in less space than traditional farms, their proponents say. Proponents say this industry makes sense from a biological standpoint because insects are part of the natural diet of many animals, especially chicken and fish.
Despite the possibilities, the insect protein industry faces many challenges. Regulatory hurdles have hampered its growth in Europe and the United States, where black soldier fly products can be used to feed poultry and some fish species but not other animals, and there is no regulatory approval for the use of other insect species for this purpose. But companies are confident that regulators in the United States will lift those restrictions soon. The report notes that black soldier fly larvae is favored by the "insect protein" industry because it "can become 200 times bigger after eating organic waste for 10 days."
Despite the possibilities, the insect protein industry faces many challenges. Regulatory hurdles have hampered its growth in Europe and the United States, where black soldier fly products can be used to feed poultry and some fish species but not other animals, and there is no regulatory approval for the use of other insect species for this purpose. But companies are confident that regulators in the United States will lift those restrictions soon. The report notes that black soldier fly larvae is favored by the "insect protein" industry because it "can become 200 times bigger after eating organic waste for 10 days."
Indigenous people around the world (Score:2)
have been eating grubs for hundreds of thousands of years
Re:Indigenous people around the world (Score:4, Informative)
have been eating grubs for hundreds of thousands of years
Indeed. Silkworm larva are quite tasty once you get used to them (better fried than boiled). Mealworms can be roasted, ground to a powder, and added to bread flour.
People have also been using grubs as animal feed for thousands of years. I raise mealworms for my chickens. I also turn the compost every few days so they can chow down on the earthworms and maggots.
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But insects are trayf, bubbeleh
Re: Indigenous people around the world (Score:1)
The excellent thing about mealworms is they're supposed to be able to feed on polystyrene. A vertical farm of these could solve a second problem as a useful recycler of waste that traditionally only goes to the landfill and is seen as a real problem.
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That would be an extremely inefficient way of breaking down polystyrene. The process requires feeding the mealworms a mix of bran and polystyrene which contains 5-10% polystyrene (by weight) and 90-95% bran.
It would be far more efficient to process PS into synthetic diesel fuel, except that we are currently engaged in a global war on the most efficient ICE thermodynamic cycle in existence today, because we're stupid.
(* note that modern diesel emissions systems already mitigate the combustion products of pol
Re: Indigenous people around the world (Score:3)
Diesel is still primary in sea transit. We will have plenty of demand for it for many decades to come. If nothing, they will be smaller engines that always run at their best efficiency and power batteries which in turn power the ship and larger, more powerful electrics to move the ship.
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except that we are currently engaged in a global war on the most efficient ICE thermodynamic cycle in existence today, because we're stupid.
Say that again while living in a valley that collects NOx and particular matter. Diesel is efficient but the lean burn and high pressure tends to produce a lot more compounds that are difficult to deal with. Without a mandate for automotives to include Selective catalytic reduction (SCR) systems, which sadly also means you will have to refill a little bottle of ammonia from time to time. And ideally you'd only permit CVT (continuously variable transmission) in diesel vehicles to optimize the emissions outpu
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
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Feeding insects to livestock is one thing, but as for me, if given the choice between a bowl of stir fried veges on a bed of mixed grains & legumes (which can very easily constitute a complete protein) or some s
Re: Indigenous people around the world (Score:2)
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That is my main issue.. It's not the concept of eating insects... if you grind them into a meal I'm sure I wouldn't mind. But I already don't like seeing them much less touching and certainly not putting them in my mouth...
Making a protein bread by mixing powdered insects with flour sounds like an idea :D.
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When people are poor, healthcare is bad and women don't work birth rates are high. When those places undergo economic development and a cultural shift where women working is the norm birthrates go way down. The only reason Africa's birth rate are so high is because they have yet mostly to undergo that process. Whether they'll get there before the Earth implodes due to human overpopulation is anyone's guess
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"Indigenous peoples" isn't a more woke way to say "savages", you know. Either way you're reducing them to their primitiveness.
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[Indigenous people around the world] have been eating grubs for hundreds of thousands of years
But, that's one of the reasons why we developed a first-world civilization, so we didn't have to eat shit like that anymore.
Boom! Exactly. People will eat clay if they are starving. The completely messed up idea that these folks that are eating insect starvation food is somehow superior or even equal is just that - messed up.
I get UN alerts, and damned if they aren't promoting eating grubs and other nasty crap. What the hell? Yeah, some people on earth do some messed up things - but we shouldn't celebrate that.
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Most cultures have some sort of Arthropods in their diet.
Lobster, Crabs, even Grasshoppers are acceptable to western pallets.
However most bugs in western cultures are associated with disease and decay. Which make us snub our noses at them as a good source.
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Most of the association between insects and disease came from two insects in particular - flies and mosquitoes. The former because they hang around and consume things humans generally find disgusting (rotten food/corpses/etc, fecal material, stuff like that), and the latter because of fun things like West Nile and Malaria. And then of course we have insects like cockroaches, which happily compete with us for our own food, or wasps and fire ants, which inflict pain (and sometimes allergy reactions).
So yeah,
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"Well, you can live on it, but it taste like shit."
- "Crocodile" Dundee
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No species which is farmed is endangered.In fact, one way to save a threatened species, like the bison, is to start exploiting it commercially.
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No species which is farmed is endangered.In fact, one way to save a threatened species, like the bison, is to start exploiting it commercially.
The other way is not to mass slaughter bison as part of a genocidal campaign against indigenous cultures. Exploitation of resources is exactly what a civilized person would say.
Abundance of Ohio River Valley during Jefferson administration http://bit.ly/1cbC2uU [bit.ly].
"Nature's P&L statement day of reckoning..." http://bit.ly/1frMP4H [bit.ly]
More suits grinding up babies for profit (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:More suits grinding up babies for profit (Score:5, Funny)
Re: More suits grinding up babies for profit (Score:1)
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Has mankind learnt nothing? Exploitation of another species is not acceptable!
Poe'ly done there, kudos!
Tell that to the tiger. Or microorganisms. (Score:1)
Sorry, unless they are solar powered (or hydrothermal vent powered), every lifeform since the existence of life eats one another.
Stop making so many goddamn humans, and we won't need horrible meat factories, and disgusting manufactures vegan or insect food!
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EU / FDA thread cautiously now (Score:2)
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You would be right about other "tagets" like locusts, etc. While they
Chickens (Score:2)
Two HUNDRED?! (Score:2)
>The report notes that black soldier fly larvae is favored by the "insect protein" industry because it "can become 200 times bigger after eating organic waste for 10 days."
I, for one, welcome our new black horse soldier fly larva overlords!
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They'll know. This whole 'mystery meat' movement is about giving vegetarians something that they think is meat. They are pretty easy to fool. I mean; what do they compare it with? People who are used to eating meat can tell the difference between chewing on local gristle and Kobe beef.
And this thread is about using insects to feed other animals. You don't have to fool them. My cat knows he is eating a bug. He just spent the last 5 minutes chasing the damned thing.
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I know vegetarians who don't like the taste of meat.
When this cheap insect protein industry is industrialised, there will be some interesting language to disguise its use to dilute more expensive mammal protein in ground meat products.
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You are behind the times. I love meat. I eat it it multiples a week. I have had a Beyond Burger and it is indistinguishable from regular hamburger, if prepared properly, Can they dupe a Filet Mignon now? Not yet. But hamburger has been solved.
Yes, ten years ago the vegetarian burger was garbage. Not any more.
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I have had a Beyond Burger and it is indistinguishable from regular hamburger
Angus? Hereford? Kobe? Grass fed? Grain fed? If you think there is some generic beef type used in hamburger your job isn't done.
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You understand that bugs are found in nature, right?
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If you ask me, Windows is anything but natural.
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then maybe, ... just maybe, ... we should use a freaking contraception every once in a while! And not make so many goddamn humans!
Cancerous tumor grows until the host is dead, then tumor dies due to lack of food. What can you do, if i only stopped growing, said tumor in his final breath. Oh well, better luck next time.
People make more kids if they are poor and life is bad. So at least some survive.
Hah it doesn't work like that. You don't really plant for anything if you live in a shithole. You just try to get the good stuff out of life and don't care about 'long term planning'.
earth as a hyperconverged storage array. (Score:1)
I was on an elimination diet for about 6 months...part of a diet to help track food and autoimmune issues. One of the key topics is making sure you are eating grass-fed meat. The idea was that you are what you eat eats. Grains they eat are grains we eat.
What does that mean for eating protein rich flies that have been feasting on organic shit for 2 weeks?
Either way, we need to figure out this mass feeding thing, as we are entering into a new era of life on earth.
And to keep this geeky. We know that stora
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95% of the world's population is concentrated on just 10% of the world's land. We aren't hitting 100%.
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So, we've filled up the cache...does that make things easier? Now we get to use the hard parts of the earth.
We need more than personal space (Score:2)
Each human needs a lot of land on average... cities do not make food. You need schools, police etc. infrastructure... We could utilize the land use better if you went to central planning... but that does not work well for people (but not doing that does not work out well for the planet either.) Even so, you need vast areas of land for farm and waste robots.
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Most of the worlds problems will be solved by Global warming when Siberia,Canada and Antarctica will become farmable.
makes more sense (Score:2)
at least this makes more sense then to make humans eat insects (instead of meat/fish/vegi-meat).
Similar efforts all over the world (Score:2)
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Nope. Major advantage of insect farming is quick turnover. Lifespans are short, so generations are short.
That means the insects are born, grow up, give birth and die quickly. So harvesting must be done quickly - once a week at most. Most likely they would be killed and freeze dried or otherwise processed on site, every single day.
As such, at any one time the number of insects held would be relatively small compared to the area they could escape to. The number of native insects would almost certainly
Additional information (Score:5, Interesting)
The black soldier fly larvae have an additional trait that make them ideal for use in waste disposal systems.
They can be self harvesting.
They have an instinct to crawl away from their food sources when they prepare to pupate. Given an appropriately shaped container they will studiously crawl up a ramp and drop into a collection container. This allows continuous feeding and harvesting instead of the batch-type production common with worms and mealworms.
That's bugged out... (Score:1)
Cricket protein powder... (Score:1)
I backed their Kickstarter and have been using their protein powders as part of my post workout recovery mix:
https://cricketsarefood.com/ [cricketsarefood.com]