Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
At the end of a small country road in Denmark is the "Enorm" factory, an insect farm set up by a Danish woman who wants to revolutionize livestock feed.
Jane Lind Sam and her father, Carsten Lind Pedersen, swapped pigs for soldier flies and created a 22,000-square-metre (237,000 square feet) factory where they intend to produce more than 10,000 tonnes of insect meal and oil a year.
The factory, which opened in December 2023, is the largest of its kind in northern Europe, and its products will initially be used by farmers for animal feed and, perhaps in the future, for human consumption.
The two entrepreneurs are making products that will be "substituting other, maybe less climate-friendly products", Lind Sam, co-owner and chief operations officer, explained to AFP.
They hope to contribute to the evolution of agriculture in a country where the sector's climate impact is under scrutiny.
[...] Under turquoise fluorescent lights, millions of black flies buzzed inside some 500 plastic cages, where they lay hundreds of thousands of eggs every day.
Inside the facility, it was impossible to escape the roar of insects who incessantly lay eggs throughout their 10-day lifespan.
"The female fly lays its eggs in this piece of cardboard," Lind Sam explained as she pulled out a sheet with a honeycomb pattern at the bottom of one of the cages.
About 25 kilograms (55 pounds) of eggs are produced per day. A single gram corresponds to about 40,000 eggs.
From these eggs come some of tomorrow's feeder flies, but also the future maggots which, once they have become pupae, will be transformed.
[...] "They are fascinating animals. And I think it's amazing that they can live on any organic matter," Lind Sam said.
Niels Thomas Eriksen, a biologist at Aalborg University, told AFP that "insects can eat materials that other animals probably won't so we can make better use" of agricultural byproducts and food waste.
Minimizing waste is one of Enorm's key aims and the manufacturer stressed that the rearing of insects facilitates "the recycling of nutrients".
It takes between 40 and 50 days to produce the finished product, which is mainly flour with a protein content of 55 percent.
It is then distributed across Europe—although Enorm remains discreet about the identity of its customers—used for feed for pig, poultry, fish and pet farms.
See Also: Fly larvae: Costa Rica's sustainable protein for animal feed
(Score: 3, Insightful) by dwilson98052 on Monday July 22 2024, @02:43AM (11 children)
...if livestock that eat this will be healthier, grow faster, or taste significantly different.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Monday July 22 2024, @06:10AM (10 children)
Poultry love Black Soldier Fly larva. Poultry like them best, live, wriggling, and totally unprocessed. They will readily accept freeze dried BSF. The BSF have to be rationed, because the protein content is too high to maintain healthy poultry, whether they be egg layers or meat birds. Only the young peeps would do well with a lot of BSF, when they need a lot of protein. And, I've heard nothing to indicate that BSF affects the taste of free range birds. The BSF may improve the taste of confined birds that don't have access to a lot of bugs and other forage.
Pigs love them too, but it takes a helluva lot of larva to put a dent in a pig's appetite. I expect that the BSF may be blended with other feed to boost the protein content. I don't expect hogs will be raised on BSF exclusively, due to cost.
I don't expect any other livestock to get these BSF. Herbivores aren't supposed to eat animal protein, after all. Herbivores almost certainly eat a few bugs along with their food, but not any really significant amount. BSF will be good for pet food if your pet is a carnivore or an omnivore.
And, finally, freeze dried BSF larva are readily available at feed stores around the USA already. I'm not aware of any BSF meal or oil though. A lot of poultry people raise BSF right alongside their poutry, tossing their mulchable material in for the larva to consume. The breeding box is designed to channel maturing larva into a bucket, which is just emptied into the poultry's feeders.
"Super stupidly easy" demo of a small scale BSF farm here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vh9tM2ccUVk [youtube.com] There are many other videos of more complicated, as well as more expensive setups if you want to search for them. But many people are already feeding BSF larva to their livestock.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 3, Interesting) by anubi on Monday July 22 2024, @10:42AM
I'm sure it will show up in cat food.
I remember buying some no-name cat food at a discount closeout store. It was clearly labeled as containing 100 percent chicken. No fillers.
Cat would not eat it.
Upon closer inspection, the food appeared to be 100 percent chicken - feathers - steamed and pureed.
Remember that melamine that showed up in cat food as manufacturers thought they found a way to get the protein assay to meet advertised spec?
I lost several cats over that one. I betcha the larvae would have worked if they found the right flavors to fool the cats.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 4, Informative) by dwilson98052 on Monday July 22 2024, @03:27PM (7 children)
"I don't expect any other livestock to get these BSF. Herbivores aren't supposed to eat animal protein, after all."
You know they feed cattle a mix that contained meat, right? It used to contain bits of other cows, but they outlawed that due to mad cow disease.... now they just put bits of other critters in the feed. Helps them grow bigger faster.
Also worth noting, many herbivores are more omnivorous than you might think and will eat meat if the opportunity arises or if their normal preferred food source is unavailable. In fact, there are very few strict herbivores... koalas being one of the few. Most others will eat at least small amounts of meat.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Monday July 22 2024, @04:00PM (2 children)
Yes, I am aware that idiots fed animal protein to herbivores for some period of time. I am also aware that the practice has been outlawed. As far back as 18 or 20 years ago, truck drivers who hauled animal feeds had to get their trailers washed after hauling any animal protein product (feather meal, bone meal, egg products including egg shells, blood meal, etc etc etc) before they could haul products intended for herbivores. Drivers who hauled animal feeds and animal products were drilled on the dangers of mad cow disease and similar.
All I can say regarding the practice is, I hope the watchdogs are doing their jobs.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 23 2024, @12:21AM (1 child)
https://gizmodo.com/field-cameras-catch-deer-eating-birds-wait-why-do-deer-1689440870 [gizmodo.com]
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Thursday July 25 2024, @01:34PM
I've seen videos of goats grazing on young chicks, grass-grass-grass-bird-grass. They were very careful to make sure the farmer wasn't looking. :D
Then again, they have a reputation as voracious omnivores so perhaps that's no surprise.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Gaaark on Monday July 22 2024, @07:02PM
I'm betting even the koalas eat some insects on their eucalyptus leaves.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. I have always been here. ---Gaaark 2.0 --
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Reziac on Tuesday July 23 2024, @02:10AM (2 children)
Yep. Horses love dog food (the more meat content, the more they love it). I have personally seen sheep nibble on a sheep carcass.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 3, Funny) by gawdonblue on Tuesday July 23 2024, @09:25PM (1 child)
Yep, bloody sheep. New Zealand made a bloody documentary [youtube.com] about the buggers.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Tuesday July 23 2024, @11:08PM
Next thing you know, the sheep will be shearing and eating us!
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Gaaark on Monday July 22 2024, @06:56PM
I'm thinking CowPigChickFly (like a TurDuckEn).
Feed the flies to the chicken, which you feed to the pig, which you feed to the cow. Roast the CowPigChickFly whole!
I'd hit that! :)
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. I have always been here. ---Gaaark 2.0 --
(Score: 2) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Monday July 22 2024, @06:01AM (10 children)
If you want to feed people insect proteins, maybe create tasty food products directly out of insects? What did the cows ever to do you?
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Monday July 22 2024, @01:56PM (8 children)
I have bought edible insects before, but the cost is astronomical - IIRC it was 10 UK pence per gramme or something insane (£100 per kilo, 10 times the cost of a decent chunk of beef per mass).
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Monday July 22 2024, @03:14PM (1 child)
Yeah but that's just because at the moment, insects are sold as a novelty.
I used to grow cricket and mealworms for my own consumption (not anymore because, like anything you produce yourself, if you don't keep up with the consumption, it becomes a headache to organize giving some away or throwing it away). I basically gave them old newspapers to eat and they gave me delicious free meat.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Monday July 22 2024, @07:04PM
And roasted, they taste like popcorn.
Raw... chewy. Really chewy.
As in, chew and chew and chew, really chewy.
But yeah... free food.
If i was on my own, i'd probably do it again too.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. I have always been here. ---Gaaark 2.0 --
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Reziac on Tuesday July 23 2024, @02:12AM (4 children)
If you do the math, you will discover that insects use about 20x more feed than cows do, per gram of edible product. (And that was for grasshoppers, which are fairly efficient.) CO2 production per gram of edible product runs apace.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Tuesday July 23 2024, @07:24AM (2 children)
Do you have a citation?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Reziac on Tuesday July 23 2024, @02:12PM (1 child)
I looked up how much feed it takes to grow a steer to about 500 pounds of butchered weight, and how much it takes to grow a grasshopper (a fairly efficient insect that is equally tolerant of a wide range of conditions) to its adult weight of 17 grams (since we're told the whole insect is edible, I didn't bother splitting out chitin and guts). On a per-gram basis, over its growing lifetime the insect eats about 20 times more (under ideal conditions, its own weight in fodder every day). Plus the steer harvests most of its own feed, while the insect has to be fed and housed, and gods help you if your "livestock" gets loose in your other crops.
If I'd included the "waste weight" of a steer (the non-edible parts which become leather and fertilizer products) that would double its efficiency compared to a grasshopper, but for this exercise I was looking only at the "edible" weight.
So, I'm the citation, but anyone can look up the data and do the obvious calculation.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Tuesday July 23 2024, @03:49PM
Thanks.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by ElizabethGreene on Tuesday July 23 2024, @02:20PM
"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." https://www.fao.org/edible-insects/en/ [fao.org]
In the case of Black Soldier Fly Larvae specifically, they are able to consume wastes that would otherwise be composted or landfilled. What makes these little critters neat is that they instinctively crawl up and away from their food source when they are ready to pupate. A well-designed farm takes advantage of this by providing little ramps for them to crawl up, making them continuously self-harvesting. Protapod, http://www.protapodusa.com/ [protapodusa.com] has some examples of commercial units for this. AFAIK, these are native to all of the Southern United States, but it gets too cold for them farther North.
Sidebar, if the sight of insect larvae, maggots, doesn't make you ill, timelapse videos of these critters eating are fascinating.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaoVBlS8iVA [youtube.com] (burger)
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ewNgb--on44 [youtube.com] (okra, short)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhR2jDS2IJI [youtube.com] (fish)
From the "I just don't have enough microplastics in my diet" department, I've read of some worms developing the ability to directly consume and digest styrofoam, but I don't recall the source for that.
(Score: 3, Funny) by ElizabethGreene on Thursday July 25 2024, @01:39PM
I ran up against this as well. Instead of paying the ludicrous shop price, I bought a small batch of mealworms and raised those. The running joke was I had a farm in my office drawer. :D
I learned from this that the Chitin in mealworm larvae exoskeletons is the same Chitin that triggers many shellfish allergies.
Researching that, I found myself wondering if we could grow chitin into arbitrarily defined shapes, e.g. the frame for a car, but I never followed up on it. Part of me likes the idea of driving a crabmobile into work. XD
(Score: 3, Insightful) by PinkyGigglebrain on Tuesday July 23 2024, @02:06AM
It would definitely be more efficient to so it's not going to happen in the USA, Canada, and most of Europe for a very long time. Right now the main obstacle is the cultural conditioning that most people have that bugs == YUCKY!!
Give someone from the USA a brownie that contains grass hoppers instead of nuts and they wont touch it, and might even get violently nauseous just at the thought. But give that same person a steamed Lobster with some garlic drawn butter and they will relish every bite, completely ignoring the fact that Lobsters are in fact "sea bugs" more closely related to cockroaches than any mammal. It is all down to the Culture they were raised in. Until that changes any effort to introduce insects and other "bugs" into the diet of average person in those cultures is doomed to fail.
Other places around the world will have the advantage as they don't have the bug==yucky mindset. You can buy bags of dried cockroaches from vending machines or get ants as a topping on your pizza depending on the country.
Uhmmm..., taste really good glazed with Teriyaki sauce and roasted over charcoal.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 4, Interesting) by ElizabethGreene on Monday July 22 2024, @12:39PM (9 children)
My hands-on experience is that Tilapia and Chickens will both fight over and devour fly larvae and mealworms with reckless abandon. Additional processing makes it more convenient for the farmer, not the critters.
One additional observation, the largest Bluegill I've ever seen was in the glimmer under a bug-zapper light hung out over the edge of a boat dock next to Cherokee Steak House in Gallatin Tennessee. The zap-splash zap-splash zap-splash-splash sound was what drew my attention to it. Every time the bug zapper sent an insect to Valhalla, the fish were literally piling up on each other to grab the well-cooked carcass.
Does it make a difference in the flavor of the meat? I don't know. It's possible; Pork from pigs fattened on acorns have an unpleasant taste. Feeding them corn for a few weeks before slaughter helps with this significantly.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 22 2024, @02:06PM (3 children)
I want to see the video of tilapia and chickens fighting over larvae. Yeah, I know that isn't what you said, but still . . .
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Monday July 22 2024, @07:12PM
"In this corner of the pond, Tiny the Tilapia.
In the other corner of the pond, Charley the Chicken."
*Ding*
"Tiny is coming out, swimming side to side, while Charley the Chicken seems to be getting waterlogged feathers.
Tiny swims some more while Charley....Charley seems to be sinking while clucking loudly...OH THE HUMANITY!....errrr... OH THE CHICKENITY!"
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. I have always been here. ---Gaaark 2.0 --
(Score: 3, Funny) by ElizabethGreene on Tuesday July 23 2024, @01:51PM (1 child)
I choose to believe that this sport could replace MMA. :D
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Tuesday July 23 2024, @02:15PM
Having seen chickens fight with snakes, I believe you are right.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by PinkyGigglebrain on Tuesday July 23 2024, @02:16AM (4 children)
Probably from the Tannin in the acorns. Gives the acrons a very bitter taste and astringent properties that would build up in the pork over time. Even the Indigenous peoples who regularly used acorns directly as a food would have to soak and rinse them several times to make them edible.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Tuesday July 23 2024, @01:57PM
Agreed. I've made acorn flour and the tannins are quite unpleasant.
Sidebar: If you live near white oaks, oaks with rounded leaves instead of pointy leaves, please check the mature acorns to see if they are bitter. If you find any non-bitter ones, I'd like to buy some acorns and/or clone your tree. These apparently exist, but in checking hundreds of trees I've never found one. :/
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Reziac on Tuesday July 23 2024, @02:24PM (2 children)
And died fairly young from kidney failure, even when the acorns were thoroughly leached. There's an interesting book (about 300 pages in very small print) from about 1804 written by an early explorer in central California, who lived with the Yana Indians long enough to work up a complete dictionary of their language, and he was very thorough about documenting their culture. Their primary staple food was acorn meal (somewhat supplemented by small birds and fish). He was rather distressed to report that there were NO elders, the oldest member of the tribe was 35, and they were to the point of children raising children, because of the early deaths due to obvious kidney failure. This was well before whites arrived in more than ones and twos, so no blaming them.
The book was in the Great Falls (Montana) Public Library some 50 years ago, which is how I found it. I don't know if it's still there, nor do I remember the author's name. But it was an interesting read.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Thursday July 25 2024, @01:31PM (1 child)
Acorns have been a staple crop for Millenia, so that would be very odd. The California tribes would also leach and eat buckeyes when the acorn crop failed. It has a different toxin in it, Asculin, that's even harder to get out. The technology to do it was quite mature. I wonder if they perhaps lost institutional memory of how to do this to a post-Columbian disease or migrated to an area with toxic groundwater?
I'm not one to give much weight to "lost technology" stories, but I can't imagine what was lost with the 95%+ population collapse America's native people went through. Is it really possible they lost the knowledge on how to prepare staple crops? That would be like forgetting how to make Cassava edible, almost inconceivable. Thinking about it now, I'm skeptical of my skepticism. I read a book that mentioned Virginia Creeper (toxic) being made into food dish, but never found any details on how to do it when I went digging. Maybe it is possible.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Thursday July 25 2024, @03:39PM
The population collapse seems to grow with every telling. There were vast stretches of North America that per firsthand reports of the day, not wild-assed estimates from those seeking current benefits, were either wholly vacant, or thinly populated by small roving bands, or where the largest settled population that can be documented was about 10,000. Where are all the corpses? We have enough corpses to document everyone else, even when they fell haphazardly in battle.
Anyway... the journal was extremely detailed, and I think can be taken as factual. But I expect were one to study lifespans vs natively-toxic diets, there'd be a broader correlation. Just because you can make something edible in the short term doesn't mean it's not doing long-term damage. Might be this guy happened upon them at the endpoint. California Indians were already very thin on the ground when whites arrived (despite that water and wild resources were then fairly abundant).
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.