The food industry is about to take a giant leap forward towards sustainability as a new partnership between Chicago-based food processing company Archer Daniels Midland and InnovaFeed, a French firm that makes insect protein for animal feed, are set to build the world's largest insect protein factory farm in central Illinois, according to Forbes.
ADM and InnovaFeed will grow and harvest billion and billions of insects called black soldier fly, whose larvae are scavengers and thrive on decomposing organic matter and convert it into a nutrient-rich protein that can be transformed into animal feed.
Black Soldier Fly Larvae
Once the facility is operational, both companies estimate yearly output could be around 60,000 metric tons of animal feed protein.
"I'm in awe. If they can pull this off, it will be magnificent," said Jeffrey Tomberlin, a professor and entomologist at Texas A&M University who has conducted years of research on insect protein
"This facility will be several times bigger than anything else in the world," Tomberlin said.
Comment: So the great push for humans to eat insects continues. See also: Is Insect-Eating Really the Future of Food?
One thing is for sure, insects do NOT provide the good fats and nutrients that helped individuals survive real plague by eating meat:
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