DISGUST! Cockroach farms

The cockroach, one of the most detested insects in much of the planet, is however in China an ingredient for revitalizing tonics, feed or even an ecological method to eliminate garbage, which has stimulated the appearance of farms in which millions of these insects.
The largest of these facilities is in the central Chinese province of Sichuan, where a farm with the equivalent of two football fields houses 6,000 million of these insects, a number almost equivalent to the total human population.

"It is an animal that has evolved almost perfectly", defends in statements to Efe a spokesman for the company that manages this farm, located in the city of Xichang, about 1,500 high above sea level, and where twenty operators They use high technology to get the best environment for insects.

The facility belongs to the pharmaceutical Haoyisheng ("Good doctor"), which breeds in it only copies of the reddish "great American cockroach", one of the largest species of this animal, with which it produces a tonic highly appreciated in medicine traditional china to cure ulcers and stomach pains.

On the farm there is a density of 280,000 cockroaches per square meter, living permanently in the dark for an average of 700 days per specimen, while their caregivers use artificial intelligence and big data methods to optimize temperature, humidity or feeding, measuring a total of 80 variables

"Twenty years ago, when the company began its production, we realized that the quality of the medicines depends a lot on the ingredients, so we started to build the first cockroach farm in which stability was guaranteed, which every exemplary outside equal ", says the spokesman.

The firm estimates that in its two decades of operation the farm has generated profits of 684 million dollars, which highlights a great business that has proliferated other facilities such as Xichang, although smaller, in various parts of the country. country.

Some of them are used for purposes unrelated to the pharmaceutical sector, such as the one in Jinan, in the central province of Henan, which receives 300 million of these insects to eliminate 15 tons of organic waste per day, a method according to its leaders more quickly and clean than in conventional landfills.

Other farms of cockroaches are used for the manufacture of protein complexes used in livestock, comprising a buoyant sector that has nevertheless generated alarm on occasion, for fear that a leak of millions of these animals in inhabited areas cause an emergency of public health.

In 2013, for example, around a million of these insects escaped from an installation in the eastern province of Jiangsu, revealing the existence of these farms and arousing fears that these insects transmit diseases and epidemics.

In Xichang, the caregivers assure that there is nothing to fear in their macrogranja, where multitude of prevention measures make it comparable to a high security prison.

"As they are accustomed to the darkness, the humidity and the temperature of the farm, they would not want to escape, but if they did they would have to go through three closed gates, and around the base there is a moat with thousands of carps that would eat them", they relate to Efe.

"If a cockroach escapes, the strong radiation in Xichang and the difference in temperature between day and night, together with the dry environment, would make it impossible for them to survive," they conclude.

Knowing that the cockroach is not much appreciated by the ordinary citizen, in the pharmaceutical they hide its use as an ingredient and market the tonic using in its container the scientific name in Latin of this one, "periplaneta americana".

With a very affordable price (about four dollars per bottle), the cockroach tonic is used by people who, like those in charge of the pharmaceutical industry, believe that the resistance of this insect to the avatars of time makes it a much more special animal than disgusting, and therefore its consumption can benefit man.

"The great American cockroach appeared much earlier than the dinosaurs and maintains almost the same genes 380 million years later. That proves that in his body there are almost magical elements, "say the breeders of these unique farms.