This ones not trying very hard to do the backstroke.
Posted on 09/18/2020 3:16:25 PM PDT by nickcarraway
For a final assignment to cap a five-year posting to China, I never would have chosen this.
But deep inside a cavernous setup of tight corridors and shelves, I'm standing in the dark, sweating profusely as the rain-like sound of millions of cockroaches eating fills the silence.
It's a peaceful ambience that would go well on one of those calming sleep apps.
Everything else about the situation would probably keep people awake.
Around me on walls, the ceiling and floors, cockroaches large and small scurry about, scattering whenever my cameraman Steve Wang points his camera light at them.
This is a roach nest on a massive scale: four industrial-size hangars packed with rows and an elaborate pipe system that pumps food waste collected from restaurants onto the shelves for the roaches to eat.
A dark hallway with cockroaches all over the walls The hangars are kept in perfect condition for cockroaches: dark, warm and filled with food waste.(ABC News: Steve Wang) The lights are off, the temperature is maintained in the high 20s and the humidity is stifling.
"We have 60 small rooms. There are 20 million cockroaches in each room. In total there are 1 billion cockroaches," farm manager Yin Diansong tells me.
"Every day they can eat 50 tonnes of kitchen waste."
Cockroach farms are common in China The project at Zhangqiubei, near the eastern city of Jinan, differs from most other cockroach farms in China.
While a massive facility in the south-west run by a company called 'Good Doctor' grinds up billions of roaches each year for use in Chinese medicine, this project mainly uses them for animal feed.
Two men holding a big pot in a chicken coop The chickens are about to eat a healthy, protein-rich meal of ground-up cockroach.(ABC News: Steve Wang) "If we can farm cockroaches on a large scale, we can provide protein that benefits the entire ecological cycle," says the head of the project, Li Yanrong.
"We can replace animal feeds filled with antibiotics and instead supply organic feed, which is good for the animals and the ground soil."
What started as an experiment to deal with food waste has blossomed into a commercial operation, although Mr Li admits it's still early days and unclear if it will be profitable in the long term.
But the sprawling fields around the cockroach farm already have pigs, ducks, chickens and goats that are feeding on the nutrient-rich cockroach mix.
A fish eating a cockroach The cockroaches are prevented from escaping the farm by a moat filled with fish.(ABC News: Steve Wang) A moat around each hanger is filled with rapacious fish hooked on the taste of cockroach.
They help to ensure the billion or so cockroaches inside don't break out and wreak havoc on the fields nearby.
Cockroaches are not just household pests Largely seen as a pest to be eradicated elsewhere, cockroaches are lucrative money-earners for an estimated 100 cockroach farmers across China.
Crushed cockroaches going by their scientific name Periplaneta Americana are listed as ingredients in various types of Chinese medicine and some medical cosmetics.
They are said to be mainly useful in helping heal scars, while some people eat or drink crushed cockroach medicines that, according to the manufacturers at least, can help reduce the size of tumours.
In some parts of China, the bugs are also eaten although it is very rare, and Mr Li tells me he personally does not cook them up, despite their nutrition.
A man in a polo shirt stands outside a factory building Li Yanrong says the cockroaches are a better, cheaper source of protein for farm animals.(ABC News: Steve Wang) That comes as a relief as he offers us lunch at the Zhangqiubei farm: pork, chicken and fish all raised on nutrient-rich cockroach feed.
Plus, as is customary for guests visiting Shandong, plenty of beer to wash it all down.
Mr Li is knowledgeable about Australia's agricultural conditions and is aware that food waste in Australia largely ends up in landfill.
More than 5 million tonnes each year, according to Australian Government figures.
He thinks the farming process of giving food waste to cockroaches to feed animals for human consumptions could potentially work overseas.
A cockroach running across a pipe The cockroaches could be used to reduce landfill by consuming all the rotting food scraps.(ABC News: Steve Wang) "The ecological cycle is so important, not just locally but worldwide," he says.
It may be a hard sell overcoming the general aversion to cockroaches elsewhere.
But it is a well-run operation that gives me food for thought.
In my last five years in China I'd seen many local ideas flourish abroad, from dockless share bikes to coronavirus containment measures adopted worldwide.
Perhaps cockroach farming could be next.
so these cant fly over the moat....?
Ironically, this is the same method that they use to keep viruses from escaping from the Wuhan-Fauci Bioweapons Lab.
Look up Palmetto Bugs - southern US. Cockroaches that fly.
Thanks God.
I might get a desk made in China (Not if it says China) but we’re not eating/drinking anything from China.
Not as easy as it sounds.
Lots of masks and PPE gear come “shipped from California”. See Amazon. My bet? Chinese.
cockroaches can also fly - I don’t see how a moat is going to prevent that
What an episode! I could imagine every scene. You’re a good short story writer.
“But they can’t do the backstroke.”
Not true!. There’s one doing the backstroke in your water picture above!
This ones not trying very hard to do the backstroke.
Super interesting. On a slight different note, but still insect related, I recently found out that the subterranean termite queen lives 20-50 YEARS! She is so fat and filled with eggs, she can’t move and if she needs to move for some reason, the other termites roll her to the new location.
There is a lot about insects we don’t know such as how they communicate. There are some that believe termites can teleport. humm...
Thanks-I can only imagine how insane that would probably look to someone who looked down that corridor that night...crazy man in boxer shorts!
See video (1:52): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ru_EiJgTodQ
It’s a metaphor
Why one should never eat food packaged in china
What do you do with the 20 tonnes of cockroach poop every day?
...I smacked at it three or four times, missing with each try...
Yep, those things have evasive maneuvers honed over a hundred million years of evolution or something. You never get them on the first encounter. There's always a chase...
So, without taking my eyes off it, I groped for a magazine or ANYTHING I could whack it with. This was a killable bug. No mercy. I roll up the magazine, creep over and...WHACK! I MISSED the damned thing, when I was trying so hard not to miss. And then, don't I lose sight of it, and cannot find it. I had to get a BIG flashlight and hunt for it. After 15 minutes, I saw it again, and...WHACK! Don't I miss it AGAIN! It drops to the floor and disappears. SHIT.
Now, this is a MAJOR, DEDICATED bug hunt. I look for twenty minutes with no success, swearing and muttering the whole time. My wife is in the next room and thinks I have lost my mind.
Finally, with a sick feeling, I have to give up. As I put down the magazine, I feel something crawling on my leg, inside my pants. I roll my eyes at myself and tell myself "Get a grip. You are just feeling itchy, there is nothing there."
Then, a few minutes later, I feel something again, and I grit my teeth and silently say to myself "Good God. THERE IS NOTHING THERE, knock this crap off and get a hold of yourself."
As I am telling this to my wife, I feel something and "ARRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHHH! THERE IS SOMETHING THERE!" I rip off my pants, and sure enough, that damned big ugly bug had flown UP MY FRIKKING PANT LEG!
I know the old saying about keeping enemies close, but this was ridiculous. I then spent the next fifteen minutes hunting it down, and DID NOT MISS again.
I’m surprised there’s that much ‘restaurant’ waste. I would have guessed ‘ground up political prisoners or concentration camp Muslims’...
Yep, palmetto bugs. Out in Palm Springs they’re called date palm beetles — and they’re huge.
LOL — I salute your proactive measures to secure the perimeter even if it did manage to “get inside the wire” so to speak for a short time...
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