Transcript

2.5.26 · Smithsonian Magazine

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Speaker 1: Welcome. This is Rebecca Shore for Radio Eye, and today
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I will be reading the Smithsonian magazine dated January February
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twenty twenty six. As a reminder, Radio e is a
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reading service intended for people who are blind or have
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other disabilities that make it difficult to read printed material.
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Please join me now for the first article titled Maggots
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are an incredibly efficient source of protein, which may make
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them the next superfood for humans. Inexpensive to raise and
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insatiably hungry for trash, black soldier fly larvae are already
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on the menu for livestock, pets and maybe soon people.
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By Mary Roach, it's mango season in Kenya. Evidence of
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this fact is heaped two stories high outside a greenhouse
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on the outskirts of Nairobi, a nine hundred ton mound
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of mangoed detritus, reeking sweetly in the February sun. The
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mango is waste from a processing plant, but it won't
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in fact be wasted, because just beyond a heap inside
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that greenhouse are one hundred and twenty eight million creatures
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that like their food rotten. They are maggots. Specifically, they
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are larvae of the black soldier fly, being reared by Insectipro,
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one of Kenya's largest black soldier fly farms. Once they mature,
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the larvae will be made into a protein meal used
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in animal feed. A twenty twenty one review article counted
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nine hundred and fifty published papers on the use of
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edible insects such as the black soldier fly for fish,
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for poultry and pigs for crustaceans for rabbits. If you
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search the online magazine Pet Food Processing using the keywords
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black soldier fly, one hundred and thirty six articles come up.
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Are maggots the superfood of the future. Nina de Groot, Insectipros,
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head of operations, would say yes right now. American adults
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get about two thirds of their protein from animal products.
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Those animals feed on crops like corn, barley, and oats,
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which require huge quantities of land, water, fertilizer, and pesticides.
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Black soldier fly larvae are a more sustainable alternative and
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offer a nutritious food source for pets and livestock. More
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humans may soon be eating them too. Companies are looking
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into selling protein bars and shakes, ice cream, and falafel
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mix made with black soldier fly larvae. De Groot is
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thirty years old, dry of wit, and long of leg.
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If you have in your head an idea of a
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maggot farmer, I wager it does not align with Nina
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to Groot. The day I visit, she's wearing a cropped
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black sweater and high waisted linen pants. The greenhouse is
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filled with black plastic boxes that contain ground mango goo
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and the larvae that are devouring it. The boxes are
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stacked six or seven high and arranged in neat rows.
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One operation I read about referred to this sort of
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set up as the modular fattening system. I mention this.
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De Groot laughs, it's crates. Once they become adult flies,
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they never eat again, but the females lay around six
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hundred eggs, ensuring plenty more hungry mouths to come. She
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sets one out so I can see what's going on inside.
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Fattening eating is for the maggot an athletic activity. It's
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a massed, writhing competition for the best seats close to
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the food, but away from the light. In two hours,
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DeGroot says, holding a mango, this is completely gone. The
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collective horde consumes sixteen point five tons of crop waist
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a day. The black soldier fly larva is a voracious
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ear because it has to be. Upon waking from its
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shape shifting pupitory, the black soldier fly will never eat
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another meal again feast while you can youngster. For the
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rest of their short lives, the flies must rely on
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the fat and nutrients they took in as seething grubs.
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They are a living pantry for their own future selves.
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Thus b s f L, as the larvae are known
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among those who work with them, are a highly concentrated
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food source. This in part explains their tremendous potential as
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animal feed. Also, they are cheap to raise, vertically farmed
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and content to live on waste material no other industry
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wants low quality input high quality output. Of the two
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billion dollars invested in insect farming to date, over half
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of that has funded black soldier fly farming operations. Black
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soldier flies are especially efficient processors of waste. They have
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a high feed conversion rate, a closely watched metric in
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the animal feed industry. According to May Wallraven, general manager
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of US operations for Enova Feed, the world's largest producer
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of black soldier fly larvae, everything you feed them turns
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into live biomass. In contrast, she said, a chicken has
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a feed conversion ratio of three or four. Over the
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span of its life. You have to feed it four
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times what it will weigh at the time you harvest it.
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There is no published feed conversion rate for humans, but
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a back of the envelope calculation indicates that you reader
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have a ratio closer to four to one. Further contributing
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to the black Soldier fly's popularity is the speed with
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which the larvae grow from speck to full sized grub.
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It is the equivalent of, as one industry website puts it,
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new born to blue whale in two weeks. We stand
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for a moment watching the squirming mass Its kind of hypnotic.
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A group says to me, you can grab some and
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hold them in your hand. Nothing happens. She revises this statement,
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I can put some in your hand. It's nice a
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little massage. She's correct, It's a featherweight version of an
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automated massage unit. I'm relieved to find that the larvae
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are not slimy, though the relief is undermined somewhat by
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a feeling I recognize from each time a child has
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handed me a hamster or guinea pig to hold and
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pet the low grade dread of being shot on. After
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a few seconds, I tip the larvae back into the
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crate and inspect my palm. There are a few tiny
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smears which a cursory rinse doesn't entirely remove. Multiply this
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by one hundred twenty eight million small smears, and you
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have the nine towering piles of larvae, excrement or frass
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behind the greenhouse. The plan is to sell it as
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a soil amendment, though demand has not yet caught up
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to supply. We are joined by insecti Pro founder and
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CEO talash Ujiebers. Without thinking, I shake her hand Whojiebers
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directs my eye to an experimental plot of corn that
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has benefited from B S f L fertilizer. She says,
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farmers have reported a twenty eight percent average increase in
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crop yields. Why then, aren't they lining up at the
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gate to buy it? Kenyon, farmers are wary. In twenty
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twenty four, bags of government subsidized fertilizer turned out to
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be diodamite, a kind of sediment used as insulation. The
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government literally sowed them bags of stones, who Jiebers says
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six workers in orange jumpsuits are working the nearest pile.
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The frass needs to compost, so the crew must turn
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the pile shovel load by shovel load. On the topic
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of turnover, is it hard to find people to do
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this work? De Groot says it is an and that
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the smells don't bother her, not the rotting mango smell,
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not the frass, not even the stench inside the insect
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breeding area to encourage females to settle in and lay eggs,
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insect to pro lines the bottom of the fly enclosures
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with a time tested blend of rotted vegetable matter deemed
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just below gagworthy. What you may or may not be
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wondering is the appeal of stinking matter for a fly.
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The nutrients in decomposed material are readily available. Bacteria have
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had a head start on breaking down the nutrients, taking
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a load off the eater's digestive tract. In the Journal
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of Insects as Food and Feed paper up Cycling of
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Manure with Insects, Current and Future Prospects, the decomposition ecologist
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Jeff Tomberlin and his colleagues write that adding poultry manure
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to the fly's diet can increase their larval weight by
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seventy five percent and decrease their development time by two days.
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On a small scale, it's possible to envision a completely
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zero waste circular economy. Let's say you keep chickens. You
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can feed maggots to the chickens and feed human food
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waste to the maggots while using the maggot's own waste
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as manure to grow more produce a local luxury establishment.
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The Alolo Safari Lodge and Farm has had success with this.
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Safety regulations in the United States require commercial operations to
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feed larvae pre consumer food waste to avoid introducing pathogens.
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In some ways, it's a shame because if they were
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fed livestock manure, it would help keep it off the
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land and out of the water. Though manure is valuable
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as fertilizer, large farms produce more than can be used,
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and manure processed by bsfl is less pathogenic than one
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might assume. Larvae naturally live in an enga legions of
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bacteria the drivers of rot, and for this reason have
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evolved powerful antimicrobial defenses. What's more, they appear to pass
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these defenses on to livestock that consume them. The paper
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Tomberlin co wrote mentions a study in which hens fed
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BSFL meal had compared with hens fed traditional feed, lower
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counts of E. Coli and other bad bacteria and higher
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counts of lactobicillis good bacteria. According to a twenty twenty
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review paper in the same journal, insect additives in poultry
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and crayfish feed have at certain levels been shown to
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diversify the gut microbiome pigs might benefit. Similarly, studies have
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shown that piglets receiving BSFL supplemented food have fewer bouts
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of diarrhea and healthier immune systems. Ugib outlines other advantages
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of animal feed made with B s f L. In
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a small experiment undertaken by Insectipro with the co operation
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of a local pig farmer, five pigs fed a diet
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supplemented with B s f L or ready for market
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about two months sooner than usual. The exoskeletons of the
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larvae contribute calcium and kitan. If you feed chickens B
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s f L, the eggshells are stronger, so there's less
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breakage in transit. Who Gibers says kitan is a good
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fiber source and may have digestive benefits. Using feed made
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with insect protein provides a nice sustainability narrative as well.
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Insect farming uses a fraction of the resources land, energy,
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water that it takes to grow corn or soy. Given
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these benefits, are American poultry and pig producers switching to
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feed made with B S F L. Not yet. It
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comes down to cost. Animal feed is a low margin business.
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Soy and corn are cheap, heavily subsidized, and grown on
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a massive scale. It's really hard to do something at
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a large scale and compete with commodities, says Wall Raven,
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the general manager at the French based company Inova. Feed
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and sustainability is not typically a prime concern among large
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scale pig and poultry operations and the feed producers that
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supply them. The situation is different in Kenya, where the
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soybean and corn supply struggles to meet demand and the
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high costs of feed put pressure on farmers. The appetite
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for insectipose product is high, too high. Who Jiebers says
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the company is currently contracted for almost twenty two hundred
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tons of product, which she says will take her at
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least five years to deliver. The Enova Feed facil and Nella, France,
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has a production floor area the size of eight soccer fields.
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It has an annual output of twenty five thousand tons
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of larvae imagine two boeing seven forty sevens of maggots
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per week. While Raven says memorably when we speak by phone,
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who in Europe is buying all this insect protein? Fish
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farms are a key market. More than half of the
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world's farmed Atlantic salmon comes from Norway, and the alternative
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protein source, wild caught feeder fish, are being exploited by overfishing.
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For now the market in America is not fish feed
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or poultry or hog feed, but rather pet food. This
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initially surprised me our pet parents, as many within the
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industry call them a o k with maggot and the
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dog food bowl. And if pets are eating insect protein,
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can their parents be far behind? In twenty twenty three,
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a Nova Feed broke round on a pie facility and Decatur, Illinois.
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It is far smaller than the company's French operation, perhaps
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a single piper cub of maggots per week, with plans
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to scale up gradually. The French facility is more server
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farm than insect farm, fattening crates stacked eight high, tended
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by robots with the exception of two employees in a
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control room. The processing of the larvae is automated. The
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insects life cycles are tightly timed such that an entire
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generation matures at the same rate. Sensors detect when the
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grubs have stopped feeding in preparation for pupation, at which
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point they are tipped into funnels that sieve out the
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frast to be made into fertilizer and move the larvae
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along to be cleaned, killed, and processed. It's about as
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factory as farming gets. The company has a sizeable advantage
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over other entropreneurs in that it has partnered with Agrobohemoth's,
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Archer Daniels Midland ADM, and Cargol. A pipe runs from
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adm's to cater corn processing facility directly into the Enova
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feed plant, and through that pipe flows the wet corn
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waste that Enova feed feeds its larvae. ADM will then
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purchase the larvae to put into certain brands of the
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pet food it sells. Its circular economy. On a corporate scale,
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the fact that its wet waste is key to both
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companies environmental messaging. The energy it would take to boil
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until the liquid is gone from thousands of gallons of
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corn processing waste or to truck at hundreds of miles
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away would be immense. With this arrangement, neither is needed.
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Enova Feed's main hurdle in the States is psychological, since
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it is selling directly to the public rather than to
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agricultural feed producers. The company recently announced that it was
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taking an a eighteen month break from production in the
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US to focus on developing the pet food market for
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our ingredients. Walraven states the obvious people are put off
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by insects. Enova Feed has developed a label for its
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partner products that says powered by Halucia. Helucia is a
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portmanteau of Hermetia and Eleusians, together, the scientific name of
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the black soldier fly. Walraven doesn't see this as deception.
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People eat pork, not pigs. She points out there's a
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separation between the animal and the ingredient. We felt like
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it would be helpful to have that separation. Walraven also
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feels the naming is justified given that Inova Feed's product
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is unique. Chicken meal is basically chicken meal, she says.
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Helucia is not just any B s F. It's the
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one we developed with all the R and D that
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went into it. Also, chicken meal doesn't have its own mascot. Lucia.
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The Hermertia eleusiens is the only B s F with
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an Instagram fan base. Even with the spruced up nomenclature,
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marketing teams have their work cut out. According to the
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A d M Survey pet parent perceptions of insect protein
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and pet food, just twenty three percent of Americans pulled
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said they were likely to feed such a product to
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their cat or dog. After the benefits of insect protein
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were explained, that number rose to more than thirty percent.
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Time will tell, dogs themselves appear to have no problem
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with it. In palatability studies, foods made with B s
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F L meal and oil performed as well as or
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better than those made with traditional protein sources like black
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soldier flies. Dogs are generally not known to be finicky,
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their owners can be a different story. Premium products that
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include human grade, hypoallergenic, and even vegan foods are among
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the fastest growing in the U S pet food market.
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Will pet food brands made with bs f L appeal
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to humans who don't eat meat. If they are avoiding
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animal products out of concern for the environment, then quite
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possibly yes, But if it's out of concern for animal
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welfare hard to say. B SF larvae do not like
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temperatures above one hundred thirteen degrees fahrenheit, and hot water
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submersion is one method used to kill them. No one
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is quite sure whether their nervous system is sophisticated enough
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to feel pain, or whether instead the movement is a
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simple reflex. Insect welfare is one topic being investigated by members,
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including a NOVA feed of the Center for Insect Biomanufacturing
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and Innovation. More prosaically, dog owners of all stripes will
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appreciate bsfl's performance. Visa vis the Purina fecal scoring chart.
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The turds of dogs fed food with either fifteen or
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thirty percent maggot protein average between a two firm but
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not hard, leaves little or no surface residue when picked up,
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and a three log shaped leaves surface residue but holds
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its form when picked up. A score considered ideal by
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the pet food industry. BSFL based dog food, according to
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one company funded study, also improves oral health. When dogs
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were fed a diet of twenty nine point five percent
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BSFL protein, which the manufacturer coyly identifies as protein X,
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they have fewer stinct generating bacteria in their dental plaque
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than when they were fed a diet of poultry by products.
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Their median breath score valuation went from slight but clearly
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noticeable to barely noticeable, a nuance arrived by a panel
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of dog breath sniffing odor judges. I ask while Raven
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whether given the health and environmental benefits of b s
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f L protein, people too will be eating foods that
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incorporate it. She was, for a time in charge of
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a Nova Feed's exploratory efforts in the human food realm,
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running test kitchens and consumer tasting panels. Dried B s
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f L meal has a nutty, bitter taste that, while
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Raven likens to unsweetened cocoa powder, she says it tasted
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great combined with chocolate, say in a shake or a
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protein bar. A likely best seller, one would think, given
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the current mania for all things protein However, it doesn't
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taste sufficiently great that a Nova feed is going forward
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with the product. The company stopped looking into it two
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years ago. It's a big step to go from feeding
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the dog to feeding yourself, while Raven says, for whoever
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goes first, it'll be a huge effort in terms of
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marketing and education. Because of the challenges of competing with
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corn and soy, A nova feed has been trying to
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increase yield by encouraging farmed black soldier flies to mate.
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Lighting has been shown to make a difference, so might
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sound staff experiment with frequencies, volumes, even vocalists. Black Soldier
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fly reproductive rates are perhaps the last metric wherein Berry
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white outperforms. Beyonce Insectipro has its own breeding research facility,
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an airy tent with thousands of adult flies and tall
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screened enclosures. The whole soldier fly cycle is in here.
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Egg larva, pupa adult. The first thing you notice upon
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stepping inside, after the smell, is the silence. They're a
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very chill fly, who Jiebers says their name makes no
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sense as they're not aggressive. They don't attack or kill
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anything or sting. They are more delicate than house flies.
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The lower half of their legs are white, like the
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school girl's knee socks. In short, the black soldier fly
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is an unusually appealing fly, possibly a world changing fly.
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It makes you wonder, as de Groot says, how we
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as humans decided that we associate only bad things with insects.
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Insects are one of the most important things in this world.
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It is insects, along with bacteria and fungi and other
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of nature's maligned players, that break things down and create
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nutrients for plants. Even house flies, I say, and people
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just want to kill them. These guys are much better
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than house flies, who Jieber says, making the case. They
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don't transmit disease, they don't hover annoyingly around your face,
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and because they don't eat, they don't get all up
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in your picnic food. To greet nods cheerfully, we hate
22:57
house flies. Next, the driver's license used to say who
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can drive? Now it says a lot about who we are.
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What was once a simple paper card has evolved with
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the tech of the times, as it has gone from
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protecting our roads to playing a role in national security.
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By Donna Albrecht in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century,
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American cities were confronting a new invasive species, the car.
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Up and down the streets of San Francisco. The automobiles
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are sizzling and steaming, lamented the San Francisco Call in
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December nineteen o one, as the new terror of locomotion
23:37
has been added to the traffic. That fear was real.
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In the heady first years of widespread automobile use. Any
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one of any age was free to drive a motor
23:48
car wherever they wanted and at whatever speed. Their early
23:52
machines could achieve stop signs, lane markings, even driving lessons
23:57
were non existent. Eventually, the local governments led the efforts
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to rein in these horseless carriages. Chicago introduced an eighteen
24:07
question exam for drivers in eighteen ninety nine, while other
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jurisdictions focused instead on licensing the vehicles, as New York,
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for one, did in nineteen o three. Pennsylvania instituted the
24:20
first age requirement for drivers in nineteen o nine. The
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first driver's license that we would recognize came in nineteen ten,
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when New York Assemblyman Albert S. Callen sponsored a new
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law requiring chauffeurs to pass an examination. To secure a license,
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a paper document with their photo on the backside. California
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became the first state to feature the photo on the
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front in nineteen fifty eight. Soon stocked with more personal data, height,
24:51
eye color, whether the driver wore glasses, the licenses became
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useful as proof of identity. For a long time, driver's
24:59
licenses were relatively easy to fake, making them an easy
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tool for underage drinkers and others seeking to cloak their identity.
25:08
One of the first high tech editions appearing on licenses
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in the nineteen nineties was a magnetic stripe developed in
25:15
the nineteen sixties by IBM that allowed law enforcement to
25:20
verify a person's identity. Later, after nine to eleven terrorists
25:25
breached airport security using counterfeit IDs, states added more stringent
25:30
security features. Today's licenses now boast holograms that appear when
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the license is tilted, microprinting, text hidden inside another visual component,
25:41
and sometimes minute perforations made by lasers to form a
25:45
state specific image. In California, for example, it's a brown bear. Today,
25:51
some states are phasing out those magnetic stripes. In October,
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California introduced new license designs bursting with red woods and
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golden poppies, replacing the stripes with the bar code containing
26:04
a unique security signature. Now, as digital wallets continue to
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displace leather one's, states from Hawaii to Louisiana are beginning
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to accept virtual licenses via a smartphone or even a
26:18
smart watch. Some states, such as Michigan, even allow you
26:22
to take the written portion of your driving test online,
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regardless once the rubber hits the road, you'll need ID. Finally,
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ask Smithsonian, you've got questions, We've got experts. Question, did
26:38
Benjamin Franklin really fly a kite in a thunderstorm? The
26:42
answer is from Steve Madewell, former Interpretive Exhibits. The answer
26:50
is from Steve Madwell, former Interpretive Exhibits coordinator, National Museum
26:55
of American History. Thanks to Franklin, we know lightning is
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simply a discharge of atmospheric electricity, but historians still debate
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whether he conducted the kite experiment. That debate, however, misses
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a more important story. In seventeen forty nine, Franklin wrote
27:17
a proposal for an experiment to prove that lightning and
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electricity are the same. That experiment involved erecting a tall
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metal rod to accumulate atmospheric electricity. In seventeen fifty two,
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a team of French experimenters became the first to try it.
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Franklin's idea gained credibility because the French scientists men of standing,
27:45
not some British colonist lent it their impromiture. Franklin would
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use his investigations into atmospheric electricity and high pointed conductors
27:56
to invent the lightning rod. This concludes readings from the
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Smithsonian magazine for today. Your reader has been Rebecca Shore.
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Thank you for listening, and have a great day.