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World’s Largest Insect Protein Farm Signals Future of Food Supply

• ggm 6y ago
  Still more expensive than other sources of protein but the curve is favourable (think solar cell efficiency over the last 10 years) and as for solar, a lot of externalities unfunded in other protein sources. I worry a bit about it using corn as a primary input: this may be a perverse incentive to grow more corn and soy, and so do more destructive land grabbing from natural resources. If they do make it scale on surplus food and compostable inputs its serving a double purpose by diversion from landfill. The upside of corn, is that a significant farm lobby in Washington will be on board. The feedlot and meat sector presumably is already there. What failure modes and waste stream risks? A billion soldier fly descend on the nearest town... Smell?
• Grakel 6y ago
  No, it doesn't.
• chaganated 6y ago
  "protein" -- Yet another bean-counting industrial abstraction. Who cares about the thousands of other unstudied compounds we're introducing into the human diet with this? What are the long-term health consequences? Externalities, not our problem! edit: allergic reactions to carmine & cochineal for example https://www.livescience.com/36292-red-food-dye-bugs-cochineal-carmine.html https://www.livescience.com/36292-red-food-dye-bugs-cochinea...
  • phobosanomaly 6y ago
    > Who cares about the thousands of other unstudied compounds we're introducing into the human diet with this? The OP article is about raising insects for animal feed, not for people feed. There may be instances of individuals with allergies to certain foodstock materials having reactions to eating meat from animals fed that foodstock, but I can't find anything about it in the literature, so I'm going to guess it's extremely rare if it actually exists?
    • chaganated 6y ago
      Changing the nutritional profile of the feed changes the nutritional profile of the animal. Some things are going to pass through. Chicken eggs in the supermarket are an excellent example of this. This is basically running a large-scale, long-term, science experiment on the public. Last science-wizardry in animal feed was using antibiotic regimens to feed offal to ruminants. Look how that one turned out -- prions in the food chain! How much time elapsed between introduction, diagnosis, and public awareness?
      • phobosanomaly 6y ago
        What would you be screening for in the target population?
        • chaganated 6y ago
          That's the problem. Life is complicated chemistry. We won't know what to look for until it is too late.
          • phobosanomaly 6y ago
            So then how do we make progress without analysis paralysis?
            • chaganated 6y ago
              If this were strongly labeled, and consumers knowingly chose to become guinea pigs, that would be acceptable. Of course, we know that isn't how things work--at least in the US anyway.
              • phobosanomaly 6y ago
                So this would look like all meat products having a mandatory label with the specific feed(s) given to the animal over the course of its lifetime? You'd have to have a USDA-maintained database that tracks each feeding instance of each animal in the country, as well as for all imported animals. That could get kind of unwieldy. Is there any country that does this currently? What's their system for doing it?