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!
I’m not eating anything my chicken eats. 😆
***yellow mealworm beetle larvae***
Just a fancy name for MAGGOTS.
Reminds me of Euell Gibbons books.
But then I also have rabbits, tree rats(squirrels) deer, and may have to go back to raising my own chickens again.
The Shmoo! They fall over dead to please you when you look at them hungrily!
Fine..
You can have my share.
I’ll eat real food.
You first.
Gagh. Connoisseurs of Klingon cuisine claim that gagh is best served very fresh.
Covid isn’t doing its job. Mealworms and other disgusting things will be used to get you numbered or hopefully dead, one way or another. It’s the commie way!
Methinks the troll doth protest WAY too much.
Sod off, swampy, as the saying goes.
AGW — the rationale for this — is a lie.
You didn’t even read the article as is typical here. This js about animal feed. Some cultures chose to eat insects. Crabs and lobsters are insects as well. I have travelled amd worked on six of seven continents Antarctica being the only one not set foot on. Locusts im Africa taste just like shrimp in Mexico both prepared in nearly identical ways. But why get all worked up just feed these super bugs to chickens and fish like the article points out then eat the fried chicken goodness or blacken the fish with a crab brown butter sauce like they do in Cajun country. Nowhere in this company’s presser did they say force people to eat our meal worms exactly the opposite they point out that using a waste product to grow in high density complete protein for animal feeds is the future. That and single celled microbial proteins. There simply is not enough land and grain to feed animals to let the world of 8 billion have meat consumption levels of the West we would meed four earths in resources so when not if the fast growing global middle class demands meats at anywhere near western consumption levels you will.absolutely have to feed them with mass produced proteins from every source imaginable.
Here is some science try to comprehend it.
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmicb.2017.02009/full
Piss up a rope did you even read the article its about animal feed. Its your type of ignorance that turns off the independent voters who want fiscal responsibility and limited government but don’t fall into the cult of everything is a mass conspiracy to force people to eat bugs and into fema camps. The world needs protein badly for feeds and to address the critical shortages of it in the developing world. India will bring aanother half billion people into the middle class in the next two decades they all will want to eat and most will want to drive as well. The planet is entering a period of severe resource shortages 8 billion cannot live at Western standards of living with the infrastructures presently used for food production or energy. Throwing a political hissy fit doesn’t change that fact. Fortunately scientists not rednecks are in charge. Go bacl read rhe actual article and look at where this company is selling and sending there production too. Its animal feed. Do you hyperventilate over the use of road kill in pet food? Or pig feeds? Because road kill is absolutely sent to the rendering plants to be turned into meat and bone meals which are used in both classes of feeds. Actual off the road picked up carcass roadkill gets sent to the rendering plants if its a fresh kill. Same for euthanized pets, and also downer aninals that were rejected from thr slaughter houses all end up in giant pressure cookers and reduced to oils plus meat and bone meals. This has been standard practice for decades only cows are not allowed to be feed M&B meal due to prions.
The wackos can’t wait to force us all to eat bugs.
The bugs are processed into powders and oils used in pet food, fish and farm feeds, and textured tofulike “meats” for human consumption.
As evidenced on this thread.
Doubling down on lies won’t convince anyone.
“Two weeks to slow the spread.”
“Safe and effective.”
“There won’t be any mandates or lockdowns.”
“The bugs are just for animal feed.”
Get rekt, Karen.
Which makes it all the odder they're pushing both electric vehicles with kill switches and solar/ wind instead of Thorium reactors.
Go spew your propaganda elsewhere, troll.
Same people that spend $8 for a cup of coffee.
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