Chinese Farm Breeds 6 Billion Cockroaches a Year for Medicine

Farm Facility

The world’s largest cockroach farm operated by pharmaceutical company Gooddoctor in Xichang city in southwestern China is breeding 6 billion cockroaches a year, a colony bigger than the world's entire population, using breeding facility operated by a “smart manufacturing” system powered by artificial intelligence(AI).

The system is located in a multi-storey building covering an area of about two sports fields filled with narrowly spaced rows of shelves lined with open containers of food and water. It constantly collects and analyses more than 80 categories of “big data”, including humidity, temperature, food supply and consumption. It also monitors changes such as genetic mutations and how these affect the growing rates of individual cockroaches.

There were very few people that has access in the facility and strict restrictions on visitors is being implemented. Authorized visitors must change into a sanitized working suit to avoid bringing in pollutants or pathogens in the area.

Medical Value

The farm's massive cockroach breeding is part of the production process for a “healing potion" used to cure ailments such as respiratory, gastric and other diseases. The potion has a slightly sweet tastes and fishy smell with tea like color as disclosed in product's packaging. Seemingly, people consuming this medicine may not be aware that it is actually made out of cockroaches since Gooddoctors list the ingredient as Periplaneta americana, the scientific name of the American cockroach.

Pulverized cockroach powder is patented as a Traditional Chinese Medicine ingredient and cosmetics companies use the insects as a cheap source of protein. In some rural areas in southern China, infants are still occasionally fed with cockroaches mixed with garlic to treat fever caused by an infection or upset stomach.

After more than two decades of nationwide studies on cockroaches, laboratory investigation and clinical trials had discovered or confirmed dozens of disease-fighting proteins and biochemical compounds. Chinese medical journals published thousands of pages which shows detailed findings suggesting cockroach potion's rejuvenating effect that could stimulate regrowth of damaged tissues such as skin and mucosa, the sticky membrane on the surface of internal organs that is difficult to heal and causes chronic pain.

Potential Environmental Risk
But while it’s all very good news on medicine production, scientist warns of possible catastrophe if these billions of cockroaches were accidentally released due to a natural disaster that may caused damage to the facility or through a failure of the AI or just simple human error. Cockroaches multiply rapidly in a suitable environment and could possibly infest and devastate the entire local areas. In 2013, about a million cockroaches escaped from a farm in southeastern China after someone sabotaged a nursery that was breeding the insects. Local authorities conducted a “large-scale disinfection” and urged residents to stay calm. Local authorities claimed (link in Chinese) that they properly handled the incident.

There are also concerns that the farm’s intensive reproduction and genetic screening would accelerate the insect’s evolution and produce “super-cockroaches”, of abnormal size and breeding capability. Professor Zhu Chaodong, the Institute of Zoology's lead scientist in insect evolution studies at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, said this is unlikely to happen. Multiple lines of defense must be in place and work properly to prevent the disaster of accidental release, he added.

Medicinal Cockroach Farm
This farm breeds 6 billion cockroaches every year... for medicine!
Posted by Weird Wild World on Thursday, May 3, 2018