Posted on 02/06/2022 2:04:25 PM PST by Roman_War_Criminal
For centuries, farmers have bred livestock and crops for desirable traits such as faster growth, better taste, and resistance to disease. Now, a new kind of rancher is following in their footsteps: mealworm breeders.
Last week, France-based Ÿnsect announced it will spend nearly $5 million on the world’s first large-scale initiative to use state-of-the-art genetics for breeding beetle larvae and other insects that can be used as animal feed, fertilizer—and even food for people.
“We’re talking about accelerating the ability to use the genomes of millions of insects” for selective breeding, says insect geneticist Christine Picard of Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis, who is not involved in the effort.
he new program, she notes, should help scientists untangle the often complex mix of genes involved in commercially valuable traits such as faster reproduction and more efficient food consumption. “The sheer volume [of genetic information] that they can get through might be able to address that.”
Ÿnsect, founded in 2011, is one of the world’s largest insect ranchers. It operates two “vertical farms”—one in France, the other in the Netherlands—that produce billions of yellow mealworm beetle larvae (Tenebrio molitor) and other insects every year.
The bugs are processed into powders and oils used in pet food, fish and farm feeds, and textured tofulike “meats” for human consumption. The company also sells the shed shells of the growing mealworms as fertilizer.
Last year, Ÿnsect worked with outside researchers to sequence and publish a nearly complete genome of the yellow mealworm. Now, it will use those genetic data to hunt for traits that could be improved through selective breeding, says Thomas Lefebvre, an R&D scientist at the company.
Scientists will use a strategy known as genomic selection, which involves using a large swath of genetic markers to identify insects likely to produce offspring with desirable traits. The approach offers a “more resilient and more informed way” to pick the adult beetles used for breeding, Lefebvre says. And although it’s a standard operating procedure in plant and livestock breeding, it’s a novel approach to industrial insect rearing.
Ÿnsect breeders should be able to “select animals that have the ‘best’ genetics, and thereby improve different characteristics,” says Dennis Oonincx, an entomologist at Wageningen University & Research who is not involved in the project. The company says it has already identified a strain of buffalo worm (Alphitobius diaperinus), a smaller cousin of the yellow mealworm, that grows 25% faster than related variants.
Better insect ranching could have benefits for the environment and human health. For example, nearly one-quarter of the world’s commercially caught fish are currently used to feed shrimp, salmon, and other animals raised in aquaculture operations—a practice many researchers have concluded is ecologically damaging and wasteful.
Insects make up a large part of many fishes’ natural diets and using mealworms could reduce pressure on wild fish stocks and make more fish available to people.
Farmed insects could also go straight to human plates. People have practiced entomophagy, or bug eating, for millennia, and some government agencies—including the European Food Safety Authority—have already deemed yellow mealworms safe for human consumption.
The grubs are rich in nutrients, containing up to 25 grams of protein for every 100 grams of worm, about the same as beef. And raising mealworms produces lower greenhouse gas emissions than other forms of animal production, Oonincx says. Farmers also need far less land to produce 1 kilogram of protein, compared with conventional livestock farming, he notes.
Ÿnsect slims down its operations even more by breeding bugs in vertical facilities. In each farm, the worms are reared in robot-automated trays stacked several stories tall, features that save energy and space.
It is now completing a third new rearing facility in northern France. When finished, it will be 35 meters high, which the company claims will make it the “world’s largest vertical farm.”
One question surrounding Ÿnsect’s initiative, Picard says, is whether the company will share the data gleaned from its program with the greater scientific community.
“This is going to benefit them and their investors, but will they share it?” she asks. Lefebvre says the company will likely seek patents that would describe its high-throughput trait-identification strategies, potentially enabling other researchers and companies to try to improve on them.
Another issue, Picard adds, is whether all the genetic honing will overcome consumers’ potential aversion to bug eating. It might all come down to marketing, she says, noting that “lobster used to be the insect of the sea, and now it’s part of haute cuisine.”
Let’s infect us and poison our soils, air and animals with genetically engineered mealworms now! Not for me thank you!
Hey, whatever it takes.
Laced with vaccines.
They are not kosher.
If COVID doesn’t do it, maybe genetically engineered mealworms will.
Bugs. It’s what’s for dinner.
I’ll be glad to ... after I process them through my chickens.
Never again. Darn things keep falling through the grates right into charcoal.
Nope.
Count me out. I would and will starve first, but actually I wouldn’t because this world is chock full of food if one knows where to find it.
They’re going after the virtue signaling greenie Weenies thinking that eating bugs, plants and other shit will save the planet.
It’s a helluva good business model. You have a plentiful supply of lefties & mentally ill types (but, I repeat myself) who will pay $9.99/pound for something produced for $0.50/pound.
I raise these for my poultry. They are totally addicted to them. But I have friends who are sensitive to pesticides and the like. They don’t like my eggs if the birds are fed regular laying mash as it is made up of corn (sprayed to the hilt) and soybeans....also sprayed. So what do I feed the mealworms to that they don’t transmit the poi8sons to the eggs. Answer: microgreens from the towers and my hand raised vegetables with no spray.
😆
Don’t these things produce significant amounts of CO2?
Insects are upwards of 60% complete protein with all 9 essential amino acids that monogastric animals cannot live without and MUST injest them to survive. These animals include fish,chickens,hogs and yes people. Only ungulates with their miracle of evolutionary biology four chambered stomachs can synthesis proteins. It is not the cow or goat or sheep that does the synthesis it is the trillions of bacteria in the last three chambers of those amazing stomachs that convert cellulose,hemicellulose and nitrogen into proteins cows are literally a bacteria factory whose sole purpose is to eat grass grind it up heat it too 98 degrees and then let it’s symbiotic bacteria ferment it into what the cow actually lives on, acetic acid, and bacterial protein. Humans ,chickens and pigs cannot do this. They must get those 9 essential amino acids from ingestion be it insects,bacterial protein,yeast protein, flesh or synthetic proteins made with petrochemicals monogastrics must get it from outside their bodies.
People need to stop hyperventilating like little toddlers this technology is perfect for animal feeds, especially fish feed which must be 50+% complete protein in content. Chickens and pigs also will happily eat whatever you put in front of them. Take it easy Francis no one is going soilent green with bugs. Meal worms and black soldiers larvae both can be grown in mass on waste organics turning what would end up rotting in a landfill taking up space and limiting the life time of the place. Instead that material is turned into high quality and high value animal feed. Its only people with a need to scream political nonsense who push the OMG there going to make everyone eat bugs BS.
Fish have the highest feed conversion ratio of any vertebrates nearly one to one. Meaning for every one kilogram of feed you get 900 grams of meat from the fish. Chickens are nearly two to one, hogs uowards of 4 and cattle not on grass feed but grains is well over ten to one. Using insects to feed fish is the most efficient eay to convert organics to edible proteins chickens would be next best. Ducks and geese both can eat cellulose in limited amounts so they have very high feed to meat ratios if supplemented with green feeds.
They are not kosher.
______
But do they taste like bacon?
Further proof that the masses are just another herd to the elites.
Remember Al Capp’s “The Shmoo”?
bugs are yummy
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