Comment by arnejenssen
12 hours ago
Similar like grass fed beef and dairy is a sign of quality and "naturality". I look forward to the day when insect fed chicken becomes a sign of quality. Because insects are part of a natural diet for chickens.
12 hours ago
Similar like grass fed beef and dairy is a sign of quality and "naturality". I look forward to the day when insect fed chicken becomes a sign of quality. Because insects are part of a natural diet for chickens.
> Because insects are part of a natural diet for chickens.
It's actually a welfare issue for chickens. They have feathers, and they molt. Just like hair, feathers need methionine. Methionine is very hard to get solely from plant sources. If they don't get enough methionine they eat each other's feathers, not just the discarded feathers (which left on their own they do normally).
If the insects are fed "naturally", though!
If the insects are fed naturally, it would probably be more cost effective to feed the chickens whatever you are feeding the insects. The only reason to introduce the insects would be if you were using something the chicken cannot eat, like wood.
Living organisms don't metabolise and transform matter in the same way.
A chicken eating an insect who ate a plant could produce higher quality feed and thus chicken than if the chicken ate the plant directly.
Same with humans. It's much more efficient to feed humans directly than animals for human consumption.
Reminds me there are startups looking at vat grown protein using hydrogen and CO2 to feed nitrogen fixing bacteria.
An interesting thing is solar farms are maybe 30-50 times more efficient than corn. So the above isn't insane on the face of it.