10 ms·

The Promise and Perils of Insect Farming

56 points by pantalaimon 5y ago

otabdeveloper4 5y ago
> The primary argument for insect farming is environmental: promoters argue that insects have a smaller resource and carbon footprint than other animals raised for meat. Insects aren't made of meat, they're mostly chitin and lymph. They don't have muscles or blood vessels, turning them into "meat" is not really possible.
- napier 5y ago
  Mealworms would like a word.
  - saltyfamiliar 5y ago
    Mealworms are very highly chitinous and a low quality food source when compared to options like crickets or roaches. Source: I keep insectivorous pets.
    - tomjen3 5y ago
      Do your pets and humans have the same food needs? I had meal worm (fried), and I remember it having an excellent protein/fat ratio.
  - hutzlibu 5y ago
    What do they say? That they want to be classified as insects?
- chriscool 5y ago
  The FAO (The Food and Agriculture Organization agency of the United Nations) doesn't quite agree with you on http://www.fao.org/edible-insects/en/ http://www.fao.org/edible-insects/en/: "Edible insects contain high quality protein, vitamins and amino acids for humans. Insects have a high food conversion rate, e.g. crickets need six times less feed than cattle, four times less than sheep, and twice less than pigs and broiler chickens to produce the same amount of protein. Besides, they emit less greenhouse gases and ammonia than conventional livestock."
  - otabdeveloper4 5y ago
    "Protein" is not meat. Otherwise beans would be meat too.
    - AstralStorm 5y ago
      Therefore, Impossible Burger is not meat. But it tastes close enough right?
      - emptyfile 5y ago
        No
      - NullPrefix 5y ago
        How much estrogen does it have though?
      - YarickR2 5y ago
        No
      - fogihujy 5y ago
        The processed meat alternatives don't really taste close enough. On the contrary, many prefer actual grilled mushrooms or vegetables in their burgers. Personally, I think fried crickets taste much better than Impossible Burger and the ilk.
  - vharuck 5y ago
    >twice less than pigs and broiler chickens I'm astounded that pigs and chickens are that efficient compared to crickets. I was thinking efficiency and body mass would have a close-to-linear negative correlation.
- throwanem 5y ago
  > They don't have muscles or blood vessels They most certainly do. [1] We could argue about whether the hydraulic structures of the wing count as "blood vessels" - probably not for this purpose, inasmuch as they do not really circulate - but muscles, absolutely. I mean, yes, insects are arthropods, and there are a few of those (such as salticids, which anyway are arachnids and not insects) who use hydraulic pressure to power some movements. But even for them, that's a special case; mostly they use muscles to move, just like we do, albeit with a very different style of scaffolding. And, just generally - have you never eaten crab or lobster? What did you imagine you were eating then, if not muscle? Why assume other arthropods would not be constructed in a fashion generally similar to those? [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insect_physiology#Muscular_system https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insect_physiology#Muscular_s...
  - koheripbal 5y ago
    You are correct, but the meat is a small percentage of their body weight and cannot be separated out from the rest. So you still cannot create a meat meal with insects.
    - falsaberN1 5y ago
      If there was a bug big enough that you can remove the shell like a shrimp, that'd be nice. I hate the little bits you end up with between your teeth when it's the whole bug roasted or such.
  - tsimionescu 5y ago
    > have you never eaten crab or lobster? What did you imagine you were eating then, if not muscle? Why assume other arthropods would not be constructed in a fashion generally similar to those? While you are ultimately right, it should be noted that the arthropods are a huge category of animals, and humans are much closer to fish (taxonomically) than insects are to crabs. In fact, insects and crabs are as close as we are to Tunicates [0]: the same phylum, Chordata for us or Arthropoda for them, but different Subphylums (Vertebrata vs Tunicata for us, Insecta vs Crustacea for them). However, essentially all animals have muscles, from the simplest worms up. Sponges and a few other extremely simplistic animals do lack these, but they are minority exceptions. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunicate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunicate
- samus 5y ago
  I don't understand the focus on "meat". Most people looking for meat substitutes will get disappointed because the substitutes can't help but taste differently. Which is fine for me as long as the taste is still good.
- JohnJamesRambo 5y ago
  https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/86zoq9/do_insects_have_muscles_if_so_are_they/ https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/86zoq9/do_insec...
jgilias 5y ago
Going a bit on a tangent here as far as the topic of the article, but... It's mind-blowing and depressing to realize that there are apparently millions of Americans who believe that dogs can't feel pain.
- mac01021 5y ago
  I searched the article for the work "dog" and did not find it. Was this comment intended for a different article?
  - Algol 5y ago
    The comment is in reference to the bar graph at the end of the article.
- wildmanx 5y ago
  The average American who may not care that much is one thing. But it's even more mind-blowing how many vegetarians believe fish can't feel pain, so while they reject eating pork, beef or chicken because the poor animals suffer, they still find it fine to eat fish. Those are the informed people! If they don't understand, why should the uninformed ones? At least cows are not close to extinction.
  - hutzlibu 5y ago
    "But it's even more mind-blowing how many vegetarians believe fish can't feel pain, so while they reject eating pork, beef or chicken because the poor animals suffer, they still find it fine to eat fish." I know this trope, but I have actually never met a vegetarian who think like this. I know vegetarians who eat fish, because it is further away, from humans, DNA wise. Or in general they just feel fine with eating fish and they do what they feel fine with, which makes sense to me. But I never actually met a person who believe fish (or animals in general) can't feel pain. I met many who are ignorant of pain of others, yes, but I never met one who actually believe that. Is this a US thing?
    - 5y ago
napier 5y ago
Let them eat insects.
hellow0rldz 5y ago
But plants also suffer, right? Also, if individual numbers count we might as well raise buffalo.
- vaylian 5y ago
  > But plants also suffer, right? As far as we know they neither feel pain nor are they sentinent.
  - wildmanx 5y ago
    Depends on how narrow your definition of "pain" is. Take a plant and put a sharp needle into its growth path. Many plats will avoid it and adjust their growth path, once they got into contact. Just like a human, a dog or a fish. The time scale is different, the effect is the same. It's a sensation that leads to avoidance of a certain negative stimulus.
    - keiferski 5y ago
      Correct. Pain just means “similar to human beings’ negative sensory input” which is very myopic, if you think about it.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
  - flobosg 5y ago
    Nociception and consciousness in plants are actually a matter of debate. There are some recent reviews addressing both topics: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00709-021-01621-5 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00709-021-01621-5 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00709-021-01642-0 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00709-021-01642-0
  - VBprogrammer 5y ago
    This argument is kind of pointless regardless; industrial agriculture kills various small animals (rats, mice, birds, voles etc).
Kiro 5y ago
> Nor are large insect farms producing meat for human consumption. Isn't this just a matter of adaption? The "insects->chickens->humans" problem seems like a temporary one and not the ultimate fallacy. I would love to eat insects. The few I've tried in Southeast Asia were very tasty.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- Ygg2 5y ago
  I don't get it, why eat insects over something like a cow? Cows provide fertilizer, provider highly nutritious meat and have the same neglible environmental impact as other wildlife. Essentially the emissions of ruminants on US soil is indistinguishable from the emission of ruminants 200 years ago. The studies that proved that cows consume huge amounts of water or emit methane were highly flawed, either comparing the usage of naturally occurring water as water consumed, or comparing whole lifecycle of cow emission to tail pipe emission of a car (compare CO2 of all things a person uses in lifetime to another persons CO2 emission of CO2 during their life).
  - liotier 5y ago
    Insects contain the most protein in proportion of body weight, their food is whatever low-quality biomass you throw at them, their production doesn't take much space... They are simply more efficient. Edit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27128086 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27128086 has a nice FAO quote along these lines.
  - adrianN 5y ago
    Even if for some reason you don't believe that beef has a much worse environmental impact, or don't believe that this matters, I think it's hard to argue against that cows are much more intelligent and much more capable of suffering than insects.
    - aww_dang 5y ago
      If empathy were the primary concern, perhaps the working conditions in Foxconn iPhone production lines or violence underpinning the petrodollar might rate higher on the list of concerns. Perhaps these issues don't offer the same performative opportunities to signal one's virtue. There's also the central planning aspect to consider. Sent from my iPhone.
kilotaras 5y ago
Crickets cost around 50 £/kg on Amazon (as either flour or snacks). At this price I can justify buying them as a high calorie snack for long distance hikes/cycles, but not for day to day usage. The same product at 7 £/kg would become a lot more attractive as a daily food.
ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
I've often referred to certain libraries or programs as "bug farms." I never knew that there really is such a thing. TIL.
flagwt 5y ago
So, we are regressing to food patterns of primitive civilizations and the newspaper propaganda industry hails it as something noble (not this article, but many others). Somehow words seem to be sufficient to get people to do anything.
- bigbillheck 5y ago
  Did you mean to post this under some 'paleo diet' article?
falsaberN1 5y ago
My biggest concern about bugs as food is the potential for parasites or infection in the stock. We already have issues detecting some of those in animals larger than us, I don't want to see what kind of maintenance hell it's going to be when a single box contains like 1000 "disposable" crickets. Bad employees surely won't help (if they can treat chickens and cows worse than objects for no reason, imagine bugs). I also get this feeling that once the industry really kicks in, corners will be cut, farms will boom and sleazy techniques by owners could end up with something as environmentally damaging as beef, even if for different reasons. There's also the risk of break outs. I'm pretty sure a million bugs escaping at once because of some accident won't be an easy fix. Sure, I know we already do operations at a similar scale with shrimp farming or so, but for aquatic creatures you can kind of control their environment much better by testing the water and such. Something like crickets need an environment that can't be controlled as easily, and I kinda don't see someone going in there to clean up every day and check for molds or fungi that could come into play (and it'd be easily covered by a cluster of bugs feeding on it with the inspector being none the wiser because it's a literal swarm inside) I can be entirely wrong of course. In fact I'd rather be mistaken here, don't get me wrong, but I don't think it's a baseless concern, even cows have had problems that spread to humans (and at least in my country it's the reason you can't buy bones for soup anymore, just in case), and now that the market is more open you could end up with contaminated product and that bug flour was delivered to 25 countries and used as cheap additive in 450 different products before anyone noticed. More than anything I'd like to see what people thinks about this. Is it a baseless concern or is it something that could happen?
JoeAltmaier 5y ago
The natural end for almost every insect is as food for another. But the article begs us to feel for the bugs! Maybe they can feel pain! I'm sorry, but that's (several) steps too far in the campaign to make people feel guilty for being carnivores.
- BuyMyBitcoins 5y ago
  It’s funny you mention that because I personally have sympathy for the “nice” insects like bees and butterflies. I’ve even gone out of my way to help a few bugs for no reason other than I wanted to be kind to them. But that being said I have no issues culling an entire hive of wasps, laying down fire ant poison, and stomping cockroaches. It’s not logically consistent but then again what facet of humanity is?
  - JoeAltmaier 5y ago
    I'm with you. I do the same. I've saved a few caterpillars on the sidewalk in my day!
  - KineticLensman 5y ago
    I'm with you, and for arachnids as well. Spiders always get a free pass in my house because I see them as helping to get rid of flies, etc. That said, I'm conflicted regarding the spiders with very long thin legs that primarily predate the 'good' spiders.
spiderfarmer 5y ago
A person in my neighborhood experimented for years with several different insects and food waste products. His conclusion was that it was not viable because there is no reliable stream of food waste in The Netherlands. Everything that is edible or valuable already has a purpose. It would be viable if the insects themselves were the end product, put the market for whole insects is negligible. Right now the insects are mostly an ingredient that competes with existing proteins.
ohgreatwtf 5y ago
What a bunch of completely cuckolded liberal bullshit. For starters, feeding corn to insects and then to animals, or more ideally, first fermenting grains and then feeding it to insects and then animals- each step actually increases the efficiency of the overall process, massively increasing the per-pound protein conversion ratio. And we could go further from there to suggest that waste material from animals could be processed using anerobic and aerobic processes, including fungal, to create the feedstock for the insects, thus exponentially increasing the feed efficiency of livestock operations. This entire article is a steaming pile of vegan masturbation. it concludes with talking about the rights of insects and crap like that.

56 points by pantalaimon 5y ago

> The primary argument for insect farming is environmental: promoters argue that insects have a smaller resource and carbon footprint than other animals raised for meat. Insects aren't made of meat, they're mostly chitin and lymph. They don't have muscles or blood vessels, turning them into "meat" is not really possible.

napier 5y ago
Mealworms would like a word.
- saltyfamiliar 5y ago
  Mealworms are very highly chitinous and a low quality food source when compared to options like crickets or roaches. Source: I keep insectivorous pets.
  - tomjen3 5y ago
    Do your pets and humans have the same food needs? I had meal worm (fried), and I remember it having an excellent protein/fat ratio.
- hutzlibu 5y ago
  What do they say? That they want to be classified as insects?
chriscool 5y ago
The FAO (The Food and Agriculture Organization agency of the United Nations) doesn't quite agree with you on http://www.fao.org/edible-insects/en/ http://www.fao.org/edible-insects/en/: "Edible insects contain high quality protein, vitamins and amino acids for humans. Insects have a high food conversion rate, e.g. crickets need six times less feed than cattle, four times less than sheep, and twice less than pigs and broiler chickens to produce the same amount of protein. Besides, they emit less greenhouse gases and ammonia than conventional livestock."
- otabdeveloper4 5y ago
  "Protein" is not meat. Otherwise beans would be meat too.
  - AstralStorm 5y ago
    Therefore, Impossible Burger is not meat. But it tastes close enough right?
    - emptyfile 5y ago
      No
    - NullPrefix 5y ago
      How much estrogen does it have though?
    - YarickR2 5y ago
      No
    - fogihujy 5y ago
      The processed meat alternatives don't really taste close enough. On the contrary, many prefer actual grilled mushrooms or vegetables in their burgers. Personally, I think fried crickets taste much better than Impossible Burger and the ilk.
- vharuck 5y ago
  >twice less than pigs and broiler chickens I'm astounded that pigs and chickens are that efficient compared to crickets. I was thinking efficiency and body mass would have a close-to-linear negative correlation.
throwanem 5y ago
> They don't have muscles or blood vessels They most certainly do. [1] We could argue about whether the hydraulic structures of the wing count as "blood vessels" - probably not for this purpose, inasmuch as they do not really circulate - but muscles, absolutely. I mean, yes, insects are arthropods, and there are a few of those (such as salticids, which anyway are arachnids and not insects) who use hydraulic pressure to power some movements. But even for them, that's a special case; mostly they use muscles to move, just like we do, albeit with a very different style of scaffolding. And, just generally - have you never eaten crab or lobster? What did you imagine you were eating then, if not muscle? Why assume other arthropods would not be constructed in a fashion generally similar to those? [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insect_physiology#Muscular_system https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insect_physiology#Muscular_s...
- koheripbal 5y ago
  You are correct, but the meat is a small percentage of their body weight and cannot be separated out from the rest. So you still cannot create a meat meal with insects.
  - falsaberN1 5y ago
    If there was a bug big enough that you can remove the shell like a shrimp, that'd be nice. I hate the little bits you end up with between your teeth when it's the whole bug roasted or such.
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  > have you never eaten crab or lobster? What did you imagine you were eating then, if not muscle? Why assume other arthropods would not be constructed in a fashion generally similar to those? While you are ultimately right, it should be noted that the arthropods are a huge category of animals, and humans are much closer to fish (taxonomically) than insects are to crabs. In fact, insects and crabs are as close as we are to Tunicates [0]: the same phylum, Chordata for us or Arthropoda for them, but different Subphylums (Vertebrata vs Tunicata for us, Insecta vs Crustacea for them). However, essentially all animals have muscles, from the simplest worms up. Sponges and a few other extremely simplistic animals do lack these, but they are minority exceptions. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunicate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunicate
samus 5y ago
I don't understand the focus on "meat". Most people looking for meat substitutes will get disappointed because the substitutes can't help but taste differently. Which is fine for me as long as the taste is still good.
JohnJamesRambo 5y ago
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/86zoq9/do_insects_have_muscles_if_so_are_they/ https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/86zoq9/do_insec...

jgilias 5y ago

Going a bit on a tangent here as far as the topic of the article, but... It's mind-blowing and depressing to realize that there are apparently millions of Americans who believe that dogs can't feel pain.

mac01021 5y ago
I searched the article for the work "dog" and did not find it. Was this comment intended for a different article?
- Algol 5y ago
  The comment is in reference to the bar graph at the end of the article.
wildmanx 5y ago
The average American who may not care that much is one thing. But it's even more mind-blowing how many vegetarians believe fish can't feel pain, so while they reject eating pork, beef or chicken because the poor animals suffer, they still find it fine to eat fish. Those are the informed people! If they don't understand, why should the uninformed ones? At least cows are not close to extinction.
- hutzlibu 5y ago
  "But it's even more mind-blowing how many vegetarians believe fish can't feel pain, so while they reject eating pork, beef or chicken because the poor animals suffer, they still find it fine to eat fish." I know this trope, but I have actually never met a vegetarian who think like this. I know vegetarians who eat fish, because it is further away, from humans, DNA wise. Or in general they just feel fine with eating fish and they do what they feel fine with, which makes sense to me. But I never actually met a person who believe fish (or animals in general) can't feel pain. I met many who are ignorant of pain of others, yes, but I never met one who actually believe that. Is this a US thing?
  - 5y ago

napier 5y ago

Let them eat insects.

hellow0rldz 5y ago

But plants also suffer, right? Also, if individual numbers count we might as well raise buffalo.

vaylian 5y ago
> But plants also suffer, right? As far as we know they neither feel pain nor are they sentinent.
- wildmanx 5y ago
  Depends on how narrow your definition of "pain" is. Take a plant and put a sharp needle into its growth path. Many plats will avoid it and adjust their growth path, once they got into contact. Just like a human, a dog or a fish. The time scale is different, the effect is the same. It's a sensation that leads to avoidance of a certain negative stimulus.
  - keiferski 5y ago
    Correct. Pain just means “similar to human beings’ negative sensory input” which is very myopic, if you think about it.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
- flobosg 5y ago
  Nociception and consciousness in plants are actually a matter of debate. There are some recent reviews addressing both topics: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00709-021-01621-5 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00709-021-01621-5 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00709-021-01642-0 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00709-021-01642-0
- VBprogrammer 5y ago
  This argument is kind of pointless regardless; industrial agriculture kills various small animals (rats, mice, birds, voles etc).

Kiro 5y ago

> Nor are large insect farms producing meat for human consumption. Isn't this just a matter of adaption? The "insects->chickens->humans" problem seems like a temporary one and not the ultimate fallacy. I would love to eat insects. The few I've tried in Southeast Asia were very tasty.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Ygg2 5y ago
I don't get it, why eat insects over something like a cow? Cows provide fertilizer, provider highly nutritious meat and have the same neglible environmental impact as other wildlife. Essentially the emissions of ruminants on US soil is indistinguishable from the emission of ruminants 200 years ago. The studies that proved that cows consume huge amounts of water or emit methane were highly flawed, either comparing the usage of naturally occurring water as water consumed, or comparing whole lifecycle of cow emission to tail pipe emission of a car (compare CO2 of all things a person uses in lifetime to another persons CO2 emission of CO2 during their life).
- liotier 5y ago
  Insects contain the most protein in proportion of body weight, their food is whatever low-quality biomass you throw at them, their production doesn't take much space... They are simply more efficient. Edit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27128086 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27128086 has a nice FAO quote along these lines.
- adrianN 5y ago
  Even if for some reason you don't believe that beef has a much worse environmental impact, or don't believe that this matters, I think it's hard to argue against that cows are much more intelligent and much more capable of suffering than insects.
  - aww_dang 5y ago
    If empathy were the primary concern, perhaps the working conditions in Foxconn iPhone production lines or violence underpinning the petrodollar might rate higher on the list of concerns. Perhaps these issues don't offer the same performative opportunities to signal one's virtue. There's also the central planning aspect to consider. Sent from my iPhone.

kilotaras 5y ago

Crickets cost around 50 £/kg on Amazon (as either flour or snacks). At this price I can justify buying them as a high calorie snack for long distance hikes/cycles, but not for day to day usage. The same product at 7 £/kg would become a lot more attractive as a daily food.

ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago

I've often referred to certain libraries or programs as "bug farms." I never knew that there really is such a thing. TIL.

flagwt 5y ago

So, we are regressing to food patterns of primitive civilizations and the newspaper propaganda industry hails it as something noble (not this article, but many others). Somehow words seem to be sufficient to get people to do anything.

bigbillheck 5y ago
Did you mean to post this under some 'paleo diet' article?

falsaberN1 5y ago

My biggest concern about bugs as food is the potential for parasites or infection in the stock. We already have issues detecting some of those in animals larger than us, I don't want to see what kind of maintenance hell it's going to be when a single box contains like 1000 "disposable" crickets. Bad employees surely won't help (if they can treat chickens and cows worse than objects for no reason, imagine bugs). I also get this feeling that once the industry really kicks in, corners will be cut, farms will boom and sleazy techniques by owners could end up with something as environmentally damaging as beef, even if for different reasons. There's also the risk of break outs. I'm pretty sure a million bugs escaping at once because of some accident won't be an easy fix. Sure, I know we already do operations at a similar scale with shrimp farming or so, but for aquatic creatures you can kind of control their environment much better by testing the water and such. Something like crickets need an environment that can't be controlled as easily, and I kinda don't see someone going in there to clean up every day and check for molds or fungi that could come into play (and it'd be easily covered by a cluster of bugs feeding on it with the inspector being none the wiser because it's a literal swarm inside) I can be entirely wrong of course. In fact I'd rather be mistaken here, don't get me wrong, but I don't think it's a baseless concern, even cows have had problems that spread to humans (and at least in my country it's the reason you can't buy bones for soup anymore, just in case), and now that the market is more open you could end up with contaminated product and that bug flour was delivered to 25 countries and used as cheap additive in 450 different products before anyone noticed. More than anything I'd like to see what people thinks about this. Is it a baseless concern or is it something that could happen?

JoeAltmaier 5y ago

The natural end for almost every insect is as food for another. But the article begs us to feel for the bugs! Maybe they can feel pain! I'm sorry, but that's (several) steps too far in the campaign to make people feel guilty for being carnivores.

BuyMyBitcoins 5y ago
It’s funny you mention that because I personally have sympathy for the “nice” insects like bees and butterflies. I’ve even gone out of my way to help a few bugs for no reason other than I wanted to be kind to them. But that being said I have no issues culling an entire hive of wasps, laying down fire ant poison, and stomping cockroaches. It’s not logically consistent but then again what facet of humanity is?
- JoeAltmaier 5y ago
  I'm with you. I do the same. I've saved a few caterpillars on the sidewalk in my day!
- KineticLensman 5y ago
  I'm with you, and for arachnids as well. Spiders always get a free pass in my house because I see them as helping to get rid of flies, etc. That said, I'm conflicted regarding the spiders with very long thin legs that primarily predate the 'good' spiders.

spiderfarmer 5y ago

A person in my neighborhood experimented for years with several different insects and food waste products. His conclusion was that it was not viable because there is no reliable stream of food waste in The Netherlands. Everything that is edible or valuable already has a purpose. It would be viable if the insects themselves were the end product, put the market for whole insects is negligible. Right now the insects are mostly an ingredient that competes with existing proteins.

ohgreatwtf 5y ago

What a bunch of completely cuckolded liberal bullshit. For starters, feeding corn to insects and then to animals, or more ideally, first fermenting grains and then feeding it to insects and then animals- each step actually increases the efficiency of the overall process, massively increasing the per-pound protein conversion ratio. And we could go further from there to suggest that waste material from animals could be processed using anerobic and aerobic processes, including fungal, to create the feedstock for the insects, thus exponentially increasing the feed efficiency of livestock operations. This entire article is a steaming pile of vegan masturbation. it concludes with talking about the rights of insects and crap like that.