Posted on 05/30/2017 10:30:16 AM PDT by BenLurkin
The individual larvae of black soldier flies, which are native to the Americas, can each eat double their weight of garbage every day, according to experts. The farm in Sichuan province then turns the bugs into a high-protein animal feed and their feces into an organic fertilizer.
These bugs are not disgusting! They are for managing food waste. You have to look at this from another angle, said Hu Rong...
...
But the black soldier fly, a rather long and slender critter, does more than eliminate waste.
Once fattened, some of the larvae are sold live or dried to feed animals such as chickens, fish, and turtles. They boast a nutritious composition: up to 63 percent protein and 36 percent lipids.
The maggots make it possible to recover proteins and fat still present in waste, then return the nutrients into the human food cycle through the livestock.
The larval feces can even be used as organic fertilizer in agriculture.
China, Canada, Australia, and South Africa are among the countries where it is legal to feed poultry and fish with insects.
It's more restricted in the United States and in the European Union, said Christophe Derrien, secretary general of the International Platform of Insects for Food and Feed, a non-profit representing Europe's insect production sector.
The EU will allow insect protein as feed in fish farms from July, Derrien said.
It's an encouraging first step because the EU is opening up to this more and more, he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at seeker.com ...
When the Chinese population went after the Eurasian tree sparrow, they pretty much wiped it out. The resulting explosion in the insect population, particularly of locusts, was a major factor in causing the Great Chinese Famine, which killed between 25 and 40 million people.
Insect feces for fertilizer..er, well, OK; chicken sh_t for fish food on fish farms, well, no.
I’ve seen a suggestion to use maggots from harvested road-kill as chicken feed.
The suggestion included an admonition not to do this near inhabited buildings.
Probably no more efficient disease vector than Chinese flies.
“Did you want flies with that?”
Mrs. AV
Larval feces? Uhh, no. Larva in any form, wriggling and alive or freeze-dried? Sure, maybe as waste management, maybe even to remove dead skin from burn victims, but never, never on my dinner plate or sneaked into my granola bars.
Bugs are already being used to feed caged pets such as lizards, snakes and turtles.
No. Fries.
Thank God the fish finally have government permission to eat insect protein.
To get a really good famine going, you always need government assistance.
I don't know; they might be, or we might be.
Hu Rong?
Not me.
Mrs. AV
That would make an awesome tag line.
They make great bait. Wax worms.
Soldier flies are good for compost piles/bins, especially if you throw protein scraps in it. If I recall the larvae supposedly bite, these aren’t like regular house fly maggots. The adult flies are harmless and live only a few days. They sort of look like little black bees more than house flies.
Freegards
Maggots? China has demoncraps too?
Flies stick in my craw.
Not something I would attempt even in my youth.
Got to be better than the guy who has to pick up the fly poop
I hit bluegill with meal worms and it was like a cartoon, pulling them in one after another. Big CA suckers.
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