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Scientists Advocate Replacing Cattle With Insects
rhettb writes "Scientists in the Netherlands have discovered that insects produce significantly less greenhouse gas per kilogram of meat than cattle or pigs. Their study, published in the online journal PLoS, suggests that a move towards insect farming could result in a more sustainable — and affordable — form of meat production."
Would they be more allergenic though?
I know more people who are allergic to arthropods than who are allergic to beef/chicken/pork.
Not sure why this is so- maybe it's the exposure to dust mites?
I've also heard it suggested that ostrich would be a pretty sustainable replacement.
Countdown to breeding larger insects for human consumption starts in ...
Eating insects is quite widespread, apart from few areas of cultural oddity (highly visible though; and we do eat other invertebrates), not to mention at least an order of magnitude more efficient from vertebrate farm animals when it comes to transformation of resources into meat.
In the form of industrially-produced meat paste (for a start) it would be probably hard or impossible to taste a difference; maybe military could introduce it to its diets - I imagine grunts can't whine quite as much as a typical consumer, and it would be one good part of the puzzle towards solving this, might get acceptance from there.
As a matter of fact - you all eat insects every day; standards for grain, flour, vegetables, etc. generally speak of "maximum number of insect body parts per unit"
(and feeding the world in a sustainable way - not exactly an Idle-grade material)
One that hath name thou can not otter
*smug*Makes me even happier that I am a vegetarian*smug*
There, fixed that for ya!
America, Home of the Brave.
In places where large clouds of flies congregate, such as Lake Malawi, the locals net millions of flies and compress them into little cakes. Handy protein packs. I'm sure they may have some nice recipes.
humans being apes with less hair
Technically, an average human has more hair follicles on his or her body than an average chimpanzee. The type of hair is responsible for visible differences, for "nakedness".
One that hath name thou can not otter
Cows are very efficient at converting grass inputs into human-usable protein, in the form of milk.
Cattle eat grass and weeds (high-quality protein!), and can operate on rocky slopes where John Deere can't farm.
While all cows start their life in a pastures, agribusiness finishes cattle on feedlots because it's much quicker to fatten animals up on grain than grass. ConAgra doesn't care that grain-finished beef has 1/2 as much beta-carotene, 1/5 as much Vitamin A, and 1/5 as much Vitamin E as cows that have eaten grass from start to finish.
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
And who gets to implement these rules, and how ? Very few people will ever voluntarily accept to have reproduction so closely monitored and restricted. It would be inhumane, degrading, and hypocritical.
I do agree with the education and empowerement of women, but they will never be able to do this if they have 6+ children.
So how do you reduce familly size in a humane manner ? The answer might surprise you, as it is paradoxal : get rid of infant mortality. This has been proven in every developing country : the FIRST step to reducing population is to completely eliminate infant mortality. Once nearly all children reach adulthood, people have less children, simply because they don't need to have as many. Once this happens, THEN education steps in and teaches people about family planning. Family planning should be tought at an early age, with high school and elementary school kids learning about condoms and safe sex. They will then disseminate this information to their parents.
While it's true that poikilotherms have a far more efficient conversion ratio when it comes to food because they're not burning off all that energy just to maintain body temperature like hot blooded animals do, I am surprised that the first answer from these scientists is culturally unacceptable (well in most western cultures anyway) insects. I mean, what happened to fish? I'm sure that the difference in energy consumption between insects and fish is not all that great when compared to say a cow, sheep or pig. Basically what you feed is what you get in weight gain, it only takes around 1.2kg of food (in some species) to produce 1kg of muscle in fish. That's very efficient. Plus pretty much every culture in the world already eats fish.
My only thought is that said scientists were worried about the huge water consumption of aquaculture. However they have completely failed to consider the up and coming field of aquaponics which is extremely water efficient (the only loss is evaporation). With aquaponics you also get delicious veggies with your protein - you have to; it's part of the system that cleans your water to keep your fish healthy. Hey but what do I know, I've only met the guy that invented it.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
The easiest way to make food from a grassy hill with poor soil is a grazing animal. Farm equipment requires flat land. Humans can't live on grass. What else would you do, bulldoze the hills and dump on lots of chemicals to make food crops grow?
Now consider the beans you so love. What about the rest of the plant? You're wasting nearly all of the plant if you don't eat it, but you can't really eat it because you're human. Feed that to an animal though, and now you have more food.
See, you only need to change one letter on the Chick-fil-A cows' signs.
That was easy.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
the French enjoy snails
The French enjoy garlic butter. They add a token amount of snail to it because just eating lumps of garlic butter would be a bit weird.
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