This might be enough to turn me vegan, ...

[CRH]

http://www.scidev.net/en/agriculture-and-environment/farming-practices/news/farmed-insects-could-provide-feed-for-livestock.html

Farmed insects could provide feed for livestock
Paula Park
28 September 2012 | EN

Common house flies (Musca domestica) may be a cheap and sustainable source of feed for farm animals, according to a scientist and an entrepreneur.

The flies, whose larvae can be bred, nurtured and ground into granules, provide roughly the same amount of edible protein as fish meal and other widely used protein sources, said entrepreneur Jason Drew.

Drew's book, The Story of the Fly and How it Could Save the World, launched in London, United Kingdom, last week, argues that the insect's larvae should be farmed commercially to provide protein for farmed fish and animals to feed the world's growing population.

Commercially bred flies can live on slaughterhouse or distillery waste, rather than on foods that could be processed and sold to humans, which also makes them environmentally sound, he said.

end excerpt ~~

How many bacterial/viral nightmares might this unleash? If there are so many people we need to do this to feed them, maybe there are too many people. But then again, our ancestors supplemented their diet with slugs and grubs. Today people eat snails, grasshoppers, rice bugs and the like, maybe this isn't so far fetched. Do I have any offers for some fly puree to put on your bagel, our should we leave this for the lower part of the food chain?

[Sekhmets Daughter]

1. Maggots, fly larvae are maggots

long known to be a good source of protein.

[CRH]

4. All the same, ...

I think I'll pass in favor of cashews, avocados, nuts and beans.

[Speck Tater]

14. When I raised chickens...

I hung a plastic bucket over the chicken yard and put meat scraps in it. Since meat is not compostable, there's nothing else to do with scraps but throw them away. So the flies would lay their eggs on the meat and the larva would hatch. And when they were ready to burrow into the ground, like they normally do to metamorphose into flies, they would migrate down and find the holes in the bucket and fall to the ground, where I had placed an old sheet of plywood, and the chickens happily gobbled them up.

The meat scraps got gone, the chickens got fed, and the cleaned bones could be crushed and tossed into the compost.

[Duer 157099]

2. Well, pigs have long turned garbage into delicious bacon

so who knows? I just worry about the GIGO thing. Insects in the wild feed on actual vegetation, usually. But insects that feed on garbage?

[CRH]

8. My thoughts exactly, my Eisenia foetidas turn much garbage, ...

into a beautiful balanced fertilizer for the soil that supports my garden. Though there is a separation of the castings from the harvest through the natural processes of bacterial decomposition and recomposition into the nutrients of plant growth. Direct GIGO without barriers, makes me nervous.

[msongs]

3. food choices are learned behavior - cultural indoctrination really. mmm, chocolate covered ants?

[RevStPatrick]

5. Insects could and should be the next great source of protein.

I have a booklet on my bookshelf titled "Why Not Eat Insects?" by Vincent M. Holt, first printed in 1885.

Yes, bugs are yucky.
But they can be ground up and made into bread.
Or fed to the cows.

I believe that between the larvae and hemp seeds, we could feed the world.
Of course, that wouldn't be profitable...

[Redlo Nosrep]

6. Yum, Fly Puree

Well, maybe I wouldn't PUREE the maggots before ingesting them. I think I'd prefer this route:

http://www.foxnews.com/health/2011/09/07/protein-packed-maggot-sandwiches-newest-state-fair-food/

My chickens adore black soldier fly maggots that I breed for them in my hanging roadkill buckets.

[CRH]

9. Yes I have heard BSFL make very good chicken food, ...

and anyone who has done much composting knows with a bit of chicken or cow manure in a slightly too wet environment, can produce them in volume. I've yet to try them for chickens, but it can't be too much different than feeding them worms, which they also love.

[veganlush]

7. veganism

is the single biggest thing a person can do to help the planet, their own health and, of course, the animals who are needlessly tortured in factory farms. The fly feeding thing is stupid on several levels. Cattle get their protein from plants and so can we.

[CRH]

11. Veganism, ...

In the right circumstances can be a very healthy and very simple way to live, requiring little energy and resources. For near a decade I lived on a diet of fresh fruits, dried fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds, mostly eaten raw and in specific combinations.

However, different environments can make this way of life very difficult for many. I personally consumed much that was shipped in, and though I lived in an agricultural location, still needed to supplement at times from other global locations. Long winters can present a challenge for the maximum benefits to a vegan. Also, living in the Arizona desert for example, would provide other challenges. Without a very good new age food store providing a large variety of local and imported foods, many locations would prove difficult. If the entire world was organized around a vegan culture, and bounties were shipped and shared, much of the ill health supporting modern medicine would disappear. However that is not the world we presently live in.

Veganism in theory could provide for our needs, however a lightly omnivorous diet, lifestyle and agriculture system could also find success, an solve some sustainability problems in organic farming collectives. I presently am omnivorous consuming some dairy, limited poultry and occasionally meat, but I never pass up a chance to haul some manure into the garden to balance the system.

I personally find veganism to the point of limiting all animal products from the inputs of my life, to be over and unnecessarily restrictive, in my situation.

Different strokes for different folks.

[stuntcat]

13. for the planet

yes. quitting meat is one of the best changes anyone can make. It's my biggest reason, all the other benefits just happen to work out in my favor :p

[silverweb]

10. Fly larvae are pretty interesting.

[font color="navy" face="Verdana"]As a food source, though, I think larvae of the black soldier fly (Hermetia illucens) are a better choice for breeding. The grubs are a lot bigger than house fly maggots.

Using the pupae as a protein source for animal feed seems pretty logical. They're already raised as food for birds and reptiles. Using them as a protein source for humans "feels" distasteful, but the ground up meal could be disguised in a lot of ways to make it quite palatable.

I accidentally ended up with a composting bin full of "soldier grubs," which are the larvae of black soldier flies. They're voracious composters and my red wigglers would never be able to keep up with them. They also seem to be a lot hardier than the worms in terms of temperature extremes.

Right now, I'm just using the grubs for composting. While I greatly appreciate their composting fervor, they certainly aren't "cute" and don't engender anything like the same affection my worms did. I used to handle the worms routinely, but can't bring myself to touch the grubs. Silly, I know.

Anyway, I'll probably go back to worms fairly soon -- or get another bin for worm composting and do both (in which case I'll have to solicit more vegetarian food waste from other sources).

[CRH]

12. There is something about my squirm, ...

that makes me smile every time I visit them. Such a simple addition to a normal garden, that makes the natural cycle seem so complete. Along with their cousins the earth worms, every garden finds in their trails, nourishment.

[silverweb]

15. Agree completely.

[font color="navy" face="Verdana"]All part of Nature's cycle, where every organism has it's special place and contribution to make.

[hunter]

16. Much better than fishmeal.

Scooping up everything out of the ocean and turning it into fishmeal for "farmed" salmon and other industrial scale meat production is just one of the ways we are destroying the oceans.

Of course the problem with these sorts of innovations is they rarely replace environmentally destructive practices. When more salmon feed is produced we simply get more salmon farms, when more chicken feed is produced we get more industrial chicken production.

I don't think eating animals is in itself unethical. Humans have been eating animals for a very long time. Eating animals is in our genes.

As a kid most of the meat we ate was fish we caught or actual farm and ranch animals, not animals raised in factories. My dad didn't hunt but he has friends who do which is good for occasional venison, etc. I've eaten pigs and chickens and cows I've seen alive. Some pig I fed and talked to ended up in the freezer. Which is why I'm now a vegetarian most days.

When I do eat meat I know where it comes from. My mom goes so far as to thank the spirit of the animal on the dinner plate, especially the Thanksgiving turkey. (One more reason many Christian religions have shunned her...) My mom and dad also hosted a couple of vegan Thanksgiving dinners when I was a kid which my ranching and dairy family older relatives were not too keen about. So they'd compensate by serving extra dead meat when Thanksgiving was held at their homes. We'd get turkey, pork, venison, trout, beef and salmon! My mom had lots of animal spirits to thank, but mostly she did it silently.

So I wonder... if I made a meatloaf out of fly larvae could I connect to some sort of individual insect animal spirit? Mostly flies annoy me, but I was watching a little Hoverfly this morning and it seemed a little spirit was in there.



Maybe this is the sort of thing you must generalize to a God or a Great Spirit. I'll give my most non-heretical Christian friends and relatives that, that their Thank you God is a generalized "thank You to the turkey spirits You created too."

Strict vegans may disagree, but I have trouble with plant spirits too. I'm trained as a biologist. Plant's are like animals that can't run away. They might easily be much more sophisticated than insects. Therefore if you are the sort of person who thanks animal spirits, then you ought to be thanking plant spirits too...

Complications, complications....

[gtar100]

17. What a beautiful insect.

Hard to associate that with the common housefly.