According to "Extreme recycling turns poo into food", Coghlan say that growing maggots from manure, by maggot product to poo ratio at 1:10, which have a half protein and one fourth oil by weight of maggot, can use as a source of animal feeding with cheaper price than soy and fish meal.
I pick this news in "Newscientist", which is one of recommendation sources from Peter, that is use scientific language and research in easy way to understand and be interesting.
I'm interested in this news about maggot because it remind me about one of my subject in university, Parasitology. Maggot is a parasite, which is lava stage of flies, that cause of interrupt wound healing called "Myiasis" in animals. Maggot is used to be a bad guy but not now; that is, it use for therapy which is named "Maggot therapy" to treat chronic wound by eating debris and necrotic or death tissue and make the wound to be healing.
And now maggot can use for produce feed in farm animals with cheaper and good quality source of protein. I know that you will image some scene like pig eating fresh maggot, which isn't true. The animal nutritionist use maggot in maggot cake form or powder to mix it with other ingredient to be pallet. And interestingly, the maggot contain no bacteria, E.coli and Samonella from poo which is use to be food source of it. The waste poo from maggot products is deodorised and can use as fertilizer. In the future, I think maggot powder will be a source of protein to our companion animals like dogs and cats.
If animals can use maggot to be their food. What's about us, human? Can we use insects to be a source of protein? There are more than thousands of insect species. In "Why not eat insects?" by Mercel Dicke, he suggest that we have to use insect to be a protein source with good for ecological system, which insect release Carbondioxide less than farm animals, and bring you to see insects menu. Maybe next week you will want to try one.
References:
1. Coughlan, A.(2012, November 21). Extreme recycling turns poo into food. Newscientists. Retrieved November 22, 2012. from: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21628923.600-extreme-recycling-turns-poo-into-food.html
2. Myiasis - fly larvae.(2009, April 9). University of Brsitol: School of Biological Sciences in Veterinary Parasitology & Ecology. Retrieved November 23, 2012. from: http://www.bristol.ac.uk/biology/research/ecological/vpe/myiasis.html
3. Sherman, R.(2009, May). Maggot Therapy Takes Us Back to the Future of Wound Care: New and Improved Maggot Therapy for the 21st Century. PubMed Central. Retrieved November 23, 2012. from: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2771513/
4. Dicke, M. (2010, December). Why not eat insects?. TED. Retrieved November 23, 2012. from: http://www.ted.com/talks/marcel_dicke_why_not_eat_insects.html
I had watched on TV exploring programs that many tribes in primitive stage in Amazon jungle and Africa,who have some insects as a eating habit. Insects are improtant protein supplyer for them. There is a famous story for children "Doggy's Poo" by Jung Saeng Kang, which is about personified doggy's poo's sacrifice with love for one flower blossom. It has the lesson even though it looks humble and dirty, has the good reason to be in the world.
ReplyDeleteI am getting good at doggy's poo on the street.
I've just spent 189 minutes working hard on the first draft of my essay on Ralph, organizing and setting out my support for a main idea that I think disagrees with everyone else writing on this topic, and when I take a break I find ... Mo encouraging us to enjoy poo for food. At least I had had dinner first.
ReplyDeleteI don't mind the idea of insects - I've tried deep fried grasshoppers, and I enjoyed the Central Thai soup made from red ant larvae (or should that be pupae?), but I don't think I could bring myself to try actual maggots. I guess this is a cultural thing about what we are used to. I love mouldy blue cheese like Stilton, but some of my Thai friends don't even love regular cheeses and certainly wouldn't eat the tasty mouldy ones that I love.
HOnestly, I enjoyed Mo's blog response. It is an interesting article, certainly "extreme" as the author admits in the first sentence. I also like Mo's boost for New Scientist, to which I've subscribed since I was at university many years ago. It used to be one of those things I hoarded when it came in paper format as a weekly magazine. After a few years of carefully filing them all away in boxes in case we wanted to reread or cite that wonderful article, my flatmate and I realised that a thin magazine every week soon added up to a lot of space and weight, and we almost never actually went to the trouble of digging them out again. But we still couldn't throw them away.
Then I accumulated boxes of them here in Thailand.
And then it all went online.
Joy! I threw them all away and started using online search.
All of my subscriptions to newspapers, magazines and journals are now online only. I would never go back to those antiquated paper versions. So getting back to conclude with a topic Mo raised, I'm doing my bit for global warming and the environment by no longer using paper. But I'm not so sure about making insects or maggots part of my daily diet.
Don't worry if your main idea disagrees with mine - I similarly disagreed with the former student whose provisional thesis statement about Ralph is included in the handout listing them all, and he got an A grade for his essay.
DeleteI saw this article in the web, too. It's so attractive. I have heard about leech therapy, similar to your 'Maggot therapy', in the science exhibition for children in Korea. The assistant in the exhibition said leeches were so expensive by that reason, and there were special farm to raise leeches and supply to labs. Maybe I can stand leeches, but maggots.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was a child, I have eaten deep fried grasshoppers and boiled pupae of silkworms. Nowadays these foods are very rare. I liked these foods, maybe these tastes, but someone said to me whether I had ever observed these things shapes. Yes, I did, then I couldn't eat these things. After observing, the tastes changed into like eating aliens. The feeling might be more strong than gummy bears. Gummy bears are just only similar shapes of bear, if I eat a head of gummy bear it doesn't mean I eat a head of bear. So, I learned the lesson that the attitude to an object is very important, as like an ancient monk in Korea who perceived a truth after quenching with drinking rotten water in a skull.