
Cockroach farms in China - wallflower
http://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2148914/cockroach-sushi-inside-farming-revolution-could-cure-cancer
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leshow
> .. " kill 6 tonnes (6.6 short tons) of cockroaches at a time with heat and
> extracts the essence from them."

Essence? What the hell is a cockroach essence?

> “The effectiveness of cockroaches has been tested by the bodies of our
> ancestors and proven by lab experiments,” Geng said.

What lab experiments? Which ancestors?

> Geng said kangfuxin ye, made entirely from cockroaches, can cure oral and
> peptic ulcers, skin burns and wounds, and even prevent stomach cancer.

I really hope people don't take this as a preventative measure for stomach
cancer.

All of that within a few paragraphs, the amount of bullshit in this article is
incredible. While I'm sure mashed up roach guts is probably not the worst
thing for you, the claims in this article are unsubstantiated and just don't
make any sense.

~~~
wufufufu
They call it a "healing potion" in the article. My first response was also
"Wow I can't believe they're creating a ton of cockroaches and playing with
them to create this snake oil medicine" but it appears _somewhat_ legit?

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27375766](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27375766)

Although maybe those studies are just fudged data by Big Cockroach. Or maybe
these studies are in the same vein as the studies that spawn clickbait like
"red wine is good for your heart, you don't need to exercise you can just
drink!"

~~~
staticassertion
> red wine is good for your heart, you don't need to exercise you can just
> drink

lalalalala I can't hear you

~~~
yellowapple
If whiskey counted toward this, I'd have the heart of an athlete.

Instead I have the knee injuries of one.

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jpmoyn
I could see cockroaches as a food source for farm animals maybe, but I have my
doubts about roaches ever making the mainstream western diet. If it costs
less, and is more environmentally friendl, to produce a pound of roaches than
it does a pound of corn, why not turn it into pig food?

~~~
RmDen
Shrimp and roaches are pretty much the same thing..one lives in the ocean, the
other on land...

~~~
abawany
I am fairly sure I am not alone in a severe and visceral aversion to roaches
whereas shrimp excite no such sentiment. I have always wondered why that is -
it seems so irrational. Also, roaches have some capabilities that make them
somewhat special [1] - let's hope the super-size trend that applies to other
farmed products does not make its way to this creature.

[1] [http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20141021-the-fastest-
insect-i...](http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20141021-the-fastest-insect-in-
the-world)

~~~
taigeair
Interesting fact - "Lobster was also commonly served in prisons, much to the
displeasure of inmates. American lobster was initially deemed worthy only of
being used as fertilizer or fish bait, and until well into the 20th century,
it was not viewed as more than a low-priced canned staple food."

Perception is key.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobster](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobster)

~~~
joncrane
I read that a big part of this sentiment was because it was all ground up,
shell, guts, and all, when served.

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uhtred
Are people so averse to things like lentils and beans as soures of protein
that they'd rather eat roaches? What a strange world we live in.

~~~
leshow
I don't see the connection that brought that up? Lentils are an incomplete
source of protein, unlike animal proteins. They don't even have similar ratios
of macro nutrients. It's a complete non-sequitur.

~~~
uhtred
I made a perfectly logical connection, thank you. It's easy to get all the
required proteins from plant sources - lentils, beans etc. That was my point.

~~~
leshow
Why, because they are both food? Lentils and almost all plant proteins are not
complete proteins.

~~~
uhtred
Then eat the lentils or beans with some rice and BAM! You got yourself some of
that complete protein you seem to be obsessed with. Plenty of other plant
based complete proteins too - soy beans, quinoa for example. Live the dream my
friend.

~~~
leshow
If you're looking at rice as a protein source IMO you're looking in the wrong
place. It's almost completely a carbohydrate. That's like eating a slice of
bread 'for the protein'.

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SquirrelOnFire
So now that we've begun factory farming cockroaches, how long until a
cockroach-pox emerges?

~~~
thaumasiotes
The plus side of this is that while cows and pigs are evolutionarily quite
close to humans, and chickens are still fairly close, cockroaches are
radically different biologically. (e.g. cowpox causes sores in the cow's skin,
and in your skin, whereas cockroaches don't even have skin.) The most
plausible way for humans to be affected would be for some parasite to have a
lifecycle that involves both cockroaches and humans.

Imagine you caught a horrible disease that weakened your leg spines, or made
your antennae fall off, or reduced the efficiency of your haemolymph in
binding oxygen to copper. How much would you care about any of that?

~~~
smsm42
Yersinia pestis (aka the plague) comes to mind. Its lifecycle involves fleas
and mammals. The twist is also the way it interacts with the flea blocks
flea's digestive tract, which makes the flea be permanently hungry and bite so
much more to try to feed itself. Which also spreads the infection, of course.
So the disease can be harmful for both insects and mammals despite different
biology.

~~~
thaumasiotes
>> The most plausible way for humans to be affected would be for some parasite
to have a lifecycle that involves both cockroaches and humans.

So the plague is a disease that arose in mammals and infects humans, with
fleas as an (affected) vector.

The threat of disease from farmed animals is generally that the large
population of animals and close contact between them and the farmers allows
diseases of that animal to transfer into the human population. This is
extremely implausible for cockroaches.

It would be easier for a disease/parasite to use humans as a cockroach-to-
cockroach vector than to directly infect the humans -- as you describe in
reverse for plague -- but I don't see that farming cockroaches increases that
threat in a manner comparable to how farming pigs dramatically increases the
threat of the existence of pig diseases (since there are more pigs). The
cockroaches on a farm have extensive direct contact with each other; there
won't be much percentage in spreading through a human.

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0xcafecafe
>>Milk can be made from the Diploptera punctata cockroach, the only variant of
cockroach known to give birth rather than lay eggs. It is found mostly on
Pacific islands.

Wow, I did not know that.

~~~
blacksmith_tb
Strange but true[1] it seems. It is peculiar enough for an insect to give
birth to live young, but making milk is even more bizarre.

1:
[https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1525-142X....](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1525-142X.2004.04012.x)

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jessaustin
_Between the cupboard layers are millions of roaming cockroaches – the
species_ Periplaneta americana, _the Latin name of the American cockroach._

I wonder why they didn't use an Asian variety? The ones I've seen over there
were much more vigorous, robust, and meaty than the ones I've seen here.
Perhaps they just don't have that special ulcer-fighting ingredient...

I love the moat full of carp, to prevent environmental damage. Hopefully there
is a drawbridge, otherwise the roaches will totally figure out how to bypass
it.

~~~
maxk42
Well cockroaches fly, so there's that.

~~~
jessaustin
It seems that's not their first option, though? I lived over the boiler room
as a freshman in college, and they came looking for warmth on a regular basis.
My roommate and I would sit around in our underwear with the windows open.
(Like I said, it was hot. Probably not the case anywhere else in Boston in the
winter!) We got to the point we could squash the bastards from afar by tossing
textbooks like frisbees. Not one roach ever took to the air to avoid his
fate...

Now I'm really wondering. In what circumstances _does_ a cockroach fly?

~~~
Avshalom
"Palmetto Bugs" tend to take flight a lot...

I think.

Definitely some roach in Florida flies a lot, which has a habit of freaking
transplants out, but I just checked the internet and it implies they don't fly
much. So maybe it's American cockroaches that fly and the German Cockroach
(the stereo typical roach) that doesn't...

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navs
One of my greatest fears is roaches. I can't even look at a Papa Roach album
cover without recoiling in disgust and fear. Regardless of whether it's made
into a form similar to chicken nuggets, just knowing it's made of roaches will
probably be enough for me to never eat the stuff. Maybe there's a business
opportunity in hypno-therapy to get over this kind of roach fear. I can't be
the only one.

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kjeetgill
Huh, this conjures up ton of interesting questions and ideas. Cockroaches seem
so resilient compared to most animals and plants. Would lucrative cockroach
farms still need to use antibiotics to increase yield?

If you do need antibiotics, in the "horrible" case that this causes the
evolution of an anti-cockroach super bug can I get some for my kitchen? You've
solved a bigger problem.

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fredch
Another week, another example of people doing something dumb on the basis of
medical superstition...

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carapace
> “Based on our current rate of expansion, it will take only three to four
> years for us to process all the kitchen waste in China,” Li said.

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gruez
>Cockroaches can cure cancer

sounds like pesudoscience. where's the evidence backing this up?

>“The effectiveness of cockroaches has been tested by the bodies of our
ancestors and proven by lab experiments,” Geng said. [...] Researchers at the
firm have published dozens of articles about its product in both Chinese and
English-language medical journals. [...] Geng, Gooddoctor’s chairman, hopes
that multiple-substance drugs – such as those used in traditional Chinese
medicine – will one day be recognised by the international science community.

makes me think the papers they wrote weren't published in any serious
publications.

>But despite its kangfuxin ye potion having proven effective in treating
ulcers and skin wounds, the company has been unable to fulfil modern Western
medicine’s requirement to isolate a single active chemical substance from
cockroaches, for use in drug manufacturing.

AFAIK all you need to do to get a drug approved by the FDA is to demonstrate
it's safe and effective. I seriously doubt isolating the drug to a single
substance is a requirement of "Western medicine".

~~~
teachrdan
I'm sympathetic to your skepticism of claims like "X can cure cancer,"
especially when they can be interpreted as folk remedies unproven by the
scientific method.

Having said that, the 2015 Nobel Prize winner in Medicine was a Chinese doctor
who re-discovered a traditional cure for malaria.[0] While this is obviously
only a single example, it goes to show that, in recent memory, there was at
least one time a significant medical advancement came from traditional Chinese
medicine.

0\. [https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-china-
blog-34451386](https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-china-blog-34451386)

~~~
bpicolo
There are a lot of medicines derived from plants - are there any proven
medicines that are derived from animal products (minus things that are
directly body-things like insulin)?

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fluxic
Burn it all

~~~
dang
Please don't do this here.

