Before We’re Forced to Eat Cockroaches, We’re Going to Ask Why
“Is there nothing else left on Earth to eat?” “Snowpiercer really was ahead of its time!” Just yesterday, netizens posed this soul-searching question after watching a reporter who had visited an American cockroach (Periplaneta americana) breeding facility down a cup of cockroach crunch coffee.
Picture this: besides American cockroaches (Periplaneta americana), countless yellow mealworms (Tenebrio molitor) and black soldier flies are wriggling and growing frantically in the world around us, even while humans sleep soundly, all for the day they might reach your dinner table. It does indeed conjure up the apocalyptic food in the film Snowpiercer — insect-protein blocks made exclusively for the lower classes.
So what is that reason? Must we really accept it? Will insects truly end up on our dining tables on a large scale in the future?
I. Insect Protein: A Noble Vision
Today, the aim of this new, large-scale insect-farming industry is more about extracting the animal protein within the insects. This has changed the nature of entomophagy: it is no longer a dietary habit that evolved naturally in a particular region, but an artificial arrangement.
In truth, the very term “insect protein” raises an eyebrow — after all, nobody calls beef “mammalian protein”. But it is a strikingly precise term, because it refers broadly to insect powders made from edible insects through various levels of processing. The raw material might be yellow mealworms, or it might be black soldier flies; the insects might simply be dried and ground up, or they might undergo complex enzymatic hydrolysis.
So for what purpose, exactly, are people set on producing insect protein on a large scale?
The answer can be traced back to a 2013 report published by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations — Edible Insects: Future Prospects for Food and Feed Security. Since then, the various benefits attributed to insect protein have been repeated ad nauseam, and can be summarised as follows:
1. As the planet’s climate and resource crises intensify, compared with traditional protein sources such as soya, fishmeal, and beef or lamb, the process of farming insects consumes far less water and arable land, and produces significantly lower greenhouse gas emissions than livestock farming;
2. Insects can convert food waste and livestock and poultry manure into high-quality protein;
3. Built upon precisely these two assumptions of sustainability, in a future where ecological crisis and population growth converge, insect protein is all the more regarded as an effective means of tackling food crises and global hunger.
Yet the real reason the industry rushed headlong into this space — something the UN never put on the table — is actually the long-standing predicament of industrial farming: feed shortages and volatile prices. Conventional feeds such as maize, soya, wheat and fishmeal are the material foundation on which livestock farming depends, with their cost accounting for roughly 60–70 percent of total livestock and poultry rearing costs. The main nutritional component they provide is, of course, protein.
But in recent years, the interplay of the pandemic, geopolitical tensions and extreme weather, coupled with an unstable international supply chain, has kept soymeal prices stubbornly high. In 2022 in particular, the price of soymeal climbed steadily from RMB 3,580 per tonne to RMB 5,630 per tonne. Against that backdrop, many countries — China included — have been scrambling to find a more stable source of feed protein. Insect farming, reputedly capable of sparing arable land, has become the principal avenue through which nations are exploring feed alternatives.
Industry research suggests that the global insect protein market reached USD 145 million in 2019 and was projected to grow to USD 366 million by 2023. China has even written “expanding insect protein feed production capacity” into the action targets of its Action Plan for Feed Grain Conservation in Livestock and Aquaculture. According to insiders, the 2025 market for Chinese insect protein exports has been very strong, driven mainly by feed-grade exports.
Insect farming is by no means anything new. Domestic research into the artificial rearing of yellow mealworms (Tenebrio molitor) began as early as 2001. But around the time the FAO published its landmark report in 2013, capital from all quarters began flooding into this emerging insect-protein industry.
By rough estimate, as of 2022, thirteen active insect-protein companies on the market — including Chinese firms such as Ziran Chuanzao and Buluputing — had collectively raised over RMB 6 billion in funding.
II. Ÿnsect’s Bankruptcy and Capital’s Food-and-Agriculture Fantasy
In fact, many companies in the alternative-protein space have been mired in losses. In the sector that preceded insect protein — the plant-based meat market — Beyond Meat, the first plant-based meat company to go public, which once boldly declared it would replace all meat, is now on the brink of bankruptcy. Impossible Foods, too, was once forced by revenue pressures to publicly state that it was considering adding real animal meat to its plant-based burgers. From a purely economic standpoint, whether in terms of growth trajectory or market demand, the prospects of alternative protein achieving stable profitability remain deeply uncertain.
Perhaps having learned from the plant-based meat pioneers’ mistakes, insect protein has set its sights mainly on the animal feed market.
Only the truly daring have launched products such as cricket biscuits or insect meatballs — items that presume everyone is a Bear Grylls — and the market response is easy to imagine.
But the animal feed road is far from smooth either. Ÿnsect’s former motto was “Creating a more sustainable global food system”. That vision sounds thoroughly idealistic, yet the very reason it was dragged down is the fact that, in actual operation, it ran directly counter to the principle of sustainability.
The first fact is that the idealised vision of insect protein farming involves feeding insects on food waste or animal manure. In reality, however, because of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), Europe has only permitted plant-based or non-ruminant animal feed for insects since 2018. This has effectively shut the door on food waste as insect feed, and feeding insects on animal manure is fraught with difficulties too — Ÿnsect still relies on soybean meal and other conventional feeds to nourish its insects.
It sounds deeply ironic: insect protein is itself an animal feed product, yet the feed supply for industrial-scale insect farming must still depend on the very grains that could have been fed directly to livestock. When discussing why Ÿnsect’s foray into the animal feed market failed, the tech media outlet TechCrunch asked whether this meant that “insect protein merely adds an expensive extra step”.
To save itself, Ÿnsect attempted to pivot to the more profitable pet food market, but the gamble failed. That is because it had already poured hundreds of millions of dollars into building “the world’s most expensive insect farm”, and the crushing debt left it no time to wait for the new business line to mature and generate returns.
This is the second fact that runs counter to sustainability: large-scale insect farming is heavily dependent on industrial and automated equipment, with upfront capital costs far exceeding those of conventional feed production — which is also the second reason it failed to compete in the animal feed market.
III. Bursting the Low-Carbon Myth of Insect Protein
Of course, words alone are not enough — this kind of advocacy would not be so persuasive without scientific data to back it up. Mainstream research tells us that insect protein has a strong environmental profile. The Edible Insects report published by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) noted that greenhouse gas emissions from insect farming are only one-tenth those of livestock.
Other studies offer even more specific figures: one suggests that for every tonne of organic waste consumed by black soldier flies, approximately 233 kg of organic fertiliser and 67 kg of insect protein can be obtained, yielding a net carbon reduction of 55.69 kg. A literature review published in 2023 reported that greenhouse gas emissions from fresh insect meat range from 0.3 to 3 kg CO2 equivalent per kilogram — well below poultry (5.97 kg), pork (6.95 kg), and beef (35 kg).
What is troubling is that when we look more closely at the background of these studies, we find the presence of capital behind them. Either the research institution itself is a food company, or the researchers work for a company that produces insect-based pet food.
Fortunately, agricultural ministries around the world take this issue seriously too — after all, when it comes to the severe consequences of global warming, agriculture bears the brunt first. A research project commissioned by the UK Government’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Life Cycle Assessment of UK Insect Protein Production Processes for Pig and Poultry Feed, compares black soldier fly larvae powder (hereafter referred to as insect meal), soybean meal, and fishmeal by examining their entire lifecycle environmental impact as feed. The insect meal is further subdivided into three categories based on the feed material used: traditional feed, poultry manure, and food waste.
The findings were the exact opposite: the climate change impact value of insect meal ranges from 12.9 to 30.1 kg CO2 equivalent per kilogram — meaning that producing 1 kg of insect meal requires the emission of approximately 12.9 to 30.1 kg CO2 equivalent into the atmosphere.
The reason for such a wide gap between study results is that, to date, the academic community still has no single, unified standard for measuring climate change impact. The data available to existing methods is limited and often insufficient, and is also constrained by research funding and geographic location. The UK report’s “climate change impact value” goes beyond greenhouse gas emissions to include acidification, water consumption, land use, and marine and freshwater eutrophication, all converted into “CO2 equivalent” — naturally leading to a different conclusion.
Looking at the overall figures, FW (food waste)-fed insect meal has the lowest climate change impact value among the three types of insect meal, with emissions of 12.9 kg per kilogram of FW insect meal produced. CM (poultry manure)-fed insect meal comes next at 16.0, while TF (traditional feed)-fed insect meal reaches a climate change impact value as high as 30.1. All three far exceed soybean meal (2.23) and fishmeal (7.98) — roughly 5.7 to 13.5 times soybean meal and 1.8 to 4.2 times fishmeal.
To put it more precisely, these numerical gaps trace back to the production and processing pipeline of insect protein. Many people tend to subconsciously assume that insect farming is a relatively natural process, little realising that it is entirely made up of high-tech tricks and industrial shortcuts. A large-scale insect farm is not a row of stacked wooden rearing boxes, but a series of gleaming, metallic automated rearing systems. Compared with warm-blooded animals like chickens and ducks, insects are far more sensitive to environmental factors such as temperature, humidity, and bacteria, and their growth is measured in weeks — the environment must be kept stable around the clock, and temperature and humidity must be adjusted in real time according to the larvae’s weekly age.
According to a senior executive at a domestic insect-protein company, since each insect species has different environmental requirements, the equipment at every farm must be customised. Inside a rearing facility, insect density can be hundreds of times higher than in a natural environment. Packed so densely, insects consume vast quantities of oxygen through respiration, emit waste gases, and generate enormous amounts of heat, excrement, and water vapour. In a natural environment, flowing air, loose soil, and rainfall help maintain a dynamic balance. In a rearing facility, temperature can only be controlled by air conditioning (black soldier flies, for instance, only feed at 25–35°C), air changes are handled by fresh air ventilation units, and machines or workers must regularly collect frass and clean the rearing containers. His team has invested considerable effort into modifying the ductwork of the fresh air ventilation system and adjusting the positioning of larvae at different weekly ages, in order to keep the rearing environment suitable while holding down electricity costs.
This is precisely why, in the UK report, the carbon emissions of insect meal far exceed those of soybean meal and fishmeal.
Since differences in production stages play such a decisive role in environmental impact, the UK’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs also simulated changes to parts of the production process to assess whether insect meal has the potential to help decarbonise the UK’s livestock industry in the future — for instance, switching from conventional energy to nuclear power, replacing petrol vehicles with electric ones, and filtering and recycling all water used within the system. After such adjustments, the carbon emissions of insect meal could conceivably fall below those of soybean meal and fishmeal, indicating that insect meal is not without environmental potential.
In China, the practical obstacle to feeding insects on food waste is that food waste is currently handled mainly through incineration. A senior executive at a domestic insect-protein company noted that although his firm is already among the industry’s leaders, its scale is still too small compared with incineration plants, and food waste processing companies would far rather contract with the incinerators. In other words, the idealised food-waste-recycling model for insect protein runs into serious difficulties in reality.
It is clear that neither research funded by insect-protein companies nor research funded by the government has completed primary data collection on climate change impact indicators across the full chain. Setting aside the influence of competing interests (which cannot be ignored regardless), the conclusions drawn from insect-protein research remain theoretical and cannot be equated with real-world environmental impact.
Even among independent studies, conclusions diverge. EU-funded research found that insect farming consumes more water than poultry, pork, beef, and lamb; the UK report, by contrast, stated that insect meal saves far more water than soybean meal. Yet both express concern over the excessive optimism surrounding insect protein’s environmental credentials.
IV. Can Food-and-Agriculture Black Tech Save Humanity and the Planet?
When some loudly proclaim so-called “substitute” protein, they have not demonstrated that insect protein or plant-based meat is actually replacing beef or lamb. Research indicates that edible insect protein is consumed primarily in snack form — energy bars, crisps, and the like — rather than as a staple, making it additive rather than substitutional. Meanwhile, eco-friendly “free-range pastoral farming” is routinely excluded from the conversation on the grounds that it is “expensive and low-yielding”, yet perhaps this very “substitution through reduction” is the direction in which we should be investing our resources and effort.
After all, hunger arises not from scarcity but from inequality.
On the claim that “insect protein can solve the food crisis”: first, there is clear evidence that a global “protein gap” does not exist. For those suffering from hunger and malnutrition, protein is merely one of many nutrients they lack. Looking at the data published by the FAO, the overall tension between global food production and demand in recent years has been modest, yet as of 2024, as many as 700 million people still go hungry — for reasons that include regional conflicts, extreme weather, and economic downturn, not insufficient supply.
One form of waste that cannot be ignored occurs well beyond the dinner table: vast quantities of food are diverted into the production of ultra-processed foods, livestock feed, and fuel. By estimate, approximately 15.5 percent of Brazil’s population was in a state of hunger in 2022, while Brazil converts roughly 70 million tonnes of grain into ethanol for fuel every year.
Meanwhile, global food wasted at the household and retail level in 2022 amounted to approximately 1.05 billion tonnes — equivalent to 1.3 meals per day for every undernourished person on the planet. China’s recent plunge in beef prices is driven by massive imports of Brazilian beef, yet the import prices themselves are truly puzzling in how low they are. If one stops thinking in terms of cost and instead considers destocking, doesn’t it all “make sense”? Looking at myself honestly, after buying cheap beef, my own meat consumption did increase; a friend, having stocked up so heavily, had to throw some away a year later — food waste pressure neatly outsourced while the producer pockets the profit. Of course, we cannot reduce the solution to simply “hand surplus food to the hungry”, but we ought to put a question mark over the urgency of ever-increasing production.
When it comes to sustainability and ecology, setting insect farming, vertical farming, and other emerging food-and-agriculture black tech in binary opposition to conventional industrial agriculture — assuming the former can solve the problems the latter creates — may well be a flawed premise from the very start. What truly demands scrutiny is the shared foundation and logic of both: treating nature as an object to be arbitrarily arranged and reshaped. Insect farming artificially concentrates insects in a space maintained by precision equipment; industrial agriculture is a classic case of humans arbitrarily remodelling a space for intensive rearing and feed cultivation.
Today, the unequal distribution of food worsened by intensive farming, the transport emissions left hanging in the air, the pollution of waterways by slurry, and the devastating ecological damage wrought by the excessive discharge of antibiotics — these are no longer secrets. Should we still believe that food-and-agriculture black tech, following the very same logic, can save us?
Of course, much of this food-and-agriculture black tech was conceived primarily to attract investment, so it is hardly surprising that things ended up back to front. Capital needs new narratives and new growth frontiers, and will not scruple at altering human dietary habits to that end — a story that repeats itself again and again within the modern food system. We are left to bear the consequences in terms of food safety, nutritional health, and ecological crisis only once the dust has settled.
This time, perhaps we could gain a fuller understanding of the changes underway a little sooner, and even imagine, sooner still, a genuinely sustainable model of insect farming. But the precondition is that we must not be swept along by the various narratives spun to attract investment and drive marketing, unable to face, in a frank and fact-based way, the defects and shortcomings of the current insect-farming model that call for change.
History, however, presses on. On 20 January 2025, the European Commission approved the placing on the market of ultraviolet-treated whole yellow mealworm (Tenebrio molitor larva) powder as a novel food, with effect from 10 February this year. Currently, many countries, including our own, are gradually widening the scope for incorporating insect protein, seeking to use it as a supplement to and replacement for animal protein sources. In the future, will humanity really be “eating insects” on a mass scale? Writing these words, I realise that this is decidedly no longer just a question out of a science-fiction film.
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