It is horrifying that boiling and microwaving are apparently such common slaughter methods. I don't think it's totally clear, from the evidence, how much insects suffer from other types of injuries, but the evidence for heat aversion is pretty dang conclusive.
Insect farming manages to be at once so unproductive and unaesthetic that this is the once issue that could truly bring all sides of the political spectrum together. I expressed this in a profound meme: https://imgflip.com/i/9y9q1n
Insect farming may be less economically viable in temperate climates. But this is not the case for the tropics. E.g. silk moths like Samia ricini and Bombyx mori grow easily and offer accessible nutrition in parts of India and South-East Asia. Samia ricini is less selective an can be grown on various host plants. One host plant is cherry laurel, a very common garden plant in Europe without other usages; small scale insect farmers use their leaves. With a small silk moth pupa farm a family can in theory be selfreliant with regard to proteins and essential fatty acids.
There is more nuance. Insect pupa and cocoons (especially of silk worms) for example are - even under the assumption of insect sentience - a possible candidate for ethically viable animal products. The caterpillars spent most of their life feeding on leaves in community, after they enter the metamorphic state of pupa sentience seems hard to detect as as their brains apparently dissolve before developing into butterflies.
„The combination of cell death, compartment shifting, trans-differentiation, and recruitment of new neurons result in no larval MBIN-MBON connections being maintained through metamorphosis. At this simple level, then, we find no anatomical substrate for a memory trace persisting from larva to adult.“ https://elifesciences.org/articles/80594
I'll have to agree with this one. Insect farming sounded like one of these ideas from science fiction, vaguely inspired by jungle life, that turned out not to work at all, just like trying to power cars with leaky hydrogen.
In this case, the demand is not there (nobody wants to eat the bugs), the supposed moral advantage over industrial farming is also not there (turns out bugs are most likely sentient), and even ecologically it sucks. So yeah, it's time to declare the thing a failure and at the very least stop subsidizing it.
There are also better alternatives coming up, including protein-dense products of fermentation ( https://solarfoods.com/ ).
One of the reasons I have no interest towards, say, silk, is because I can't help but think of the silkworms being boiled alive for a rather pricy product.
Out of curiosity, have you written about the use of carmine? IIRC, cochineal insects are ground to provide red coloring for candies and the like. I find that most of the "WEF wants u 2 eat zee bugs" crowd doesn't address that in the slightest, haha.
Thanks for this write-up! My objection might be that your sources don't seem to address the framing that I most connected with insect farming: The possibility that they could be used as a source of protein in the case of a sun-block or extreme climate change scenarios - any thoughts?
That seems like a very plausible but also overly quick conclusion to me. My quick search suggests indeed no insect species are fully autotrophic (self-sufficient) but some seem to eat materials that might be abundant despite an apocalypse like wood or waste. Also, this might depend on complex considerations around what nutrients seem essential and which can be produced more effectively from other sources in the case of an apocalypse. https://chatgpt.com/c/685a8f11-1b8c-8003-b80f-921053422d3a
Interesting. I didn’t even know insect farming was thing.
It is horrifying that boiling and microwaving are apparently such common slaughter methods. I don't think it's totally clear, from the evidence, how much insects suffer from other types of injuries, but the evidence for heat aversion is pretty dang conclusive.
Insect farming manages to be at once so unproductive and unaesthetic that this is the once issue that could truly bring all sides of the political spectrum together. I expressed this in a profound meme: https://imgflip.com/i/9y9q1n
Insect farming may be less economically viable in temperate climates. But this is not the case for the tropics. E.g. silk moths like Samia ricini and Bombyx mori grow easily and offer accessible nutrition in parts of India and South-East Asia. Samia ricini is less selective an can be grown on various host plants. One host plant is cherry laurel, a very common garden plant in Europe without other usages; small scale insect farmers use their leaves. With a small silk moth pupa farm a family can in theory be selfreliant with regard to proteins and essential fatty acids.
There is more nuance. Insect pupa and cocoons (especially of silk worms) for example are - even under the assumption of insect sentience - a possible candidate for ethically viable animal products. The caterpillars spent most of their life feeding on leaves in community, after they enter the metamorphic state of pupa sentience seems hard to detect as as their brains apparently dissolve before developing into butterflies.
„The combination of cell death, compartment shifting, trans-differentiation, and recruitment of new neurons result in no larval MBIN-MBON connections being maintained through metamorphosis. At this simple level, then, we find no anatomical substrate for a memory trace persisting from larva to adult.“ https://elifesciences.org/articles/80594
I'll have to agree with this one. Insect farming sounded like one of these ideas from science fiction, vaguely inspired by jungle life, that turned out not to work at all, just like trying to power cars with leaky hydrogen.
In this case, the demand is not there (nobody wants to eat the bugs), the supposed moral advantage over industrial farming is also not there (turns out bugs are most likely sentient), and even ecologically it sucks. So yeah, it's time to declare the thing a failure and at the very least stop subsidizing it.
There are also better alternatives coming up, including protein-dense products of fermentation ( https://solarfoods.com/ ).
One of the reasons I have no interest towards, say, silk, is because I can't help but think of the silkworms being boiled alive for a rather pricy product.
Out of curiosity, have you written about the use of carmine? IIRC, cochineal insects are ground to provide red coloring for candies and the like. I find that most of the "WEF wants u 2 eat zee bugs" crowd doesn't address that in the slightest, haha.
In the cocoon they are in the state of pupa. To my knowledge their brains have dissolved in this phasis.
Thanks for this write-up! My objection might be that your sources don't seem to address the framing that I most connected with insect farming: The possibility that they could be used as a source of protein in the case of a sun-block or extreme climate change scenarios - any thoughts?
I mean, insects need to be fed other foods, so if we can't grow plants we can't grow insects.
That seems like a very plausible but also overly quick conclusion to me. My quick search suggests indeed no insect species are fully autotrophic (self-sufficient) but some seem to eat materials that might be abundant despite an apocalypse like wood or waste. Also, this might depend on complex considerations around what nutrients seem essential and which can be produced more effectively from other sources in the case of an apocalypse. https://chatgpt.com/c/685a8f11-1b8c-8003-b80f-921053422d3a
Some of the linked papers address the food of feeding insects.
Onei-insectes.org mentions subsidies in France and Canada. Their example from the US was a USDA grant, not exactly an insect-farming subsidy.
As far as you know, are there any specific subsidies for insect-farming in the US?
Yes!