Hacker News Reader

Comment by guynamedloren | Hacker News Reader

Pork? Huh? Feed them to pigs?

We should be feeding pigs and chickens insects. They’re omnivores. It’s weird that we are trying to feed them entirely or mostly grain.

It's not weird; grain is cheap. Totally understandable.

They'd die, just like people. Mammals in general can't digest chitin. There aren't any human populations that consume a significant amount of insect protien. It's just a trick to demoralize and humiliate the peasantry.

Bugs literally aren't even fit to be fed to pigs. But I'd enjoy force feeding somebody like you more than you could handle!

Pretty sure pigs eat grubs the find when they root in the dirt.

Nah, they reject insect food. Have you ever been physically forced to eat bugs? We can change that!

You are a very strange person.

Are you a pig farmer? Because this has been studied many times and you’d think they’d notice.

This is one situation where I can say, “how can a billion Chinese people be wrong?” without sarcasm. Roasted grasshopper is sold as a snack. Whole grasshopper. People aren’t dying from it.

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adc9165

https://www.wired.com/story/insects-pigs-poultry/ - EU approved insects for pigs and poultry in 2022 and I’m pretty sure there are farmers in Europe.

Ugh, disgusting. No more European cured pork products for me!

Sure. If you keep pigs (and chickens) then there is essentially zero food waste.

This is how efficient farms have worked for centuries. Orchards full of fruit trees, with sheep grazing the grass underneath, bees pollinating the flowers, and pigs in the scrubland next door to feed the windfalls to. Maximising land use to its full potential, unlike the farming monocultures of today.

>Maximising land use to its full potential, unlike the farming monocultures of today.

"Maximising land use to its full potential" (whatever that means) =/= whatever is economically optimal (ie. factoring in inputs like labor)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com