Yummy roaches for the tummy
Breeders in China are turning cockroaches into a niche business as they train consumers to see them not as pests but as food.
YIBIN: As farmer Li Bingcai opened the door to his cockroach farm in southwest China, an insect the size of a dart flew into his face.
Picking the critter off his forehead, he tossed it back into the dark room where some 10 million more of its kind scurried around, housed in wooden frames on shelves.
The six-legged creatures may be a bugbear for most, but Li and other breeders in China are turning them into a niche business.
Some sell cockroaches for medicinal purposes, as animal feed or to get rid of food waste. Li breeds them for something else: food for human consumption.
A restaurant down the road from his facility fries them up in spicy Sichuan sauce for gutsier eaters.
“People don’t believe how good it is until they try some,” Li said, putting a live one into his mouth.
Known colloquially as American cockroaches, the Periplaneta americana is one of the largest species and are consumed for a variety of ailments: stomach ulcers, respiratory tract issues and even as a tonic.
“Cockroaches have great immunity, which is why humans will absorb their benefits after eating them,” Li said.
Tucked at the edge of bamboocovered mountains in Yibin, Li’s facility is a nondescript single-storey former farmhouse surrounded by crop fields and livestock farms.
The breeding area is roughly the size of a badminton court, with windows sealed off with netting to prevent any great escapes.
Li’s cockroaches live between the spaces of square wooden frames held together by pipes and stored in racks lining two rooms. The place is kept warm and humid, leaving a smell reminiscent of damp clothes.
“We breed them in a hygienic environment. They eat proper food – nothing synthetic,” he said.
Last year, he sold one tonne of dried cockroaches to a pharmaceutical factory for nearly 90,000 yuan (RM55,150).
His main source of income is from selling the insects directly to farms or medicine factories, supplemented by an online shop his daughter helped set up. Half a kilo of whole dehydrated insects retail for 100-600 yuan (RM61-RM367).
In neighbouring Xichang, the Gooddoctor Pharmaceutical Group runs the world’s largest cockroach farm where six billion insects are held in a facility that uses artificial intelligence to monitor movement and environmental conditions.
Some Chinese medicine experts caution that a poorly regulated industry with a low barrier of entry could result in adverse effects.
But Li is more interested in turning roaches into a delicacy and expanding his line: cockroach-laced medical cream, cockroach medicated plasters and insole inserts with cockroach essence.
He said: “There is so much good in this one insect. Many people think it’s a pest but to me, they are gold. They are like my children.”