Chinese farmer unleashes swarm of hungry cockroaches to chew through mountain of food scraps
Former pharmaceutical worker says his waste disposal system is an environmentally friendly option to fermentation
A former pharmaceutical company employee in central China has abandoned the corporate world to farm millions of cockroaches to process food waste, China News Service reports.
Li Yanrong’s farm in Zhangqiu district in Jinan, Henan province, houses 300 million American cockroaches that together munch through about 15 tonnes of food waste a day, or about a quarter of the district’s kitchen scraps.
“These cockroaches are not afraid of anything soft, hard, sour, sweet, bitter, or spicy,” Li was quoted as saying.
China generates at least 60 million tonnes of kitchen waste annually and most of it is processed through fermentation, an expensive, inefficient system that pollutes the environment, according to the report.
Li said cockroaches offered an alternative, non-polluting way of disposing of food waste.