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Farm 432

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I talked to my kids about eating insects the other day with the expected results in the form of 'ew' and such. We've spent so much time in modern society associating insects with disease it's hard to dissassociate. For some reason shrimp which are essentially bugs are no problem because (I think) they come from the ocean, so there's an obvious mental line that can dissassociate them from other bugs.

This is a great idea if you look at the math, but almost impossible to get over the emotional response. Maybe processing the grubs/flies into something less recognizable would help, but at some point you read the ingredients and you're back at square one.

Disgust seems to be one of the more irrational and risk averse emotions, which makes sense - guessing something is disgusting when it's not has little risk, but guessing something is not disgusting when it really is dangerous carries great risk.

Interesting problem especially when recoginzing what damage our current meat production is causing, plus the base inefficiencies of it.

These are my thoughts exactly. While I love the idea and think it may be great for some things, I just don't see many people making the switch to eating bugs anytime soon.

Mealworm powder is catching on in health circles. I think the essential difference is that you never have to see the legs, shells, compound eyes, etc. that scream "Insect!". Grind these up, mix them into sauce or a stew, and I doubt I'd care, even if I knew the origin, just like I can see the inside of a slaughterhouse and can still eat ground meat.

A lot of what we eat (steaks, chicken nuggetts, hamburger, bacon) is dissasociated with the source form of the meat. This should probably be the inroad. If people get used to the idea that they're ingesting insects anyhow, then maybe the rest gets easier?

I dunno..

What is the point of eating insects, though? Why not just eat lentils?

An excellent question, I hope someone weighs in.

I think the proposed value here is in the quality and quantity of protein provided

Boiled Lentils are around 9% protein - http://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/foods/show/4783?qlookup=16070&ma...

Where according to this thesis project presentation grubs are 42% protein.

I was puzzling over how 25% protein could turn into 9% protein, but then I realised: that boiled number is including 70% water. Obviously there is no protein in water.

If you ignore the water, it's 29% protein. Alternatively, 25g/100kcal.

And have my teeth rot from all the phytic acid?

Umm what?

You're supposed to cook lentils. Also, turns out lentils don't even contain that much phytic acid from the start.

Finally, your teeth rot? How? I suppose if you didn't cook the lentils, you might want to chew and ruminate them in your mouth for a few hours (tip: no, you don't), which might be long enough for the acid to have some effect on your teeth. But if you consume them like normal, and apply some basic dental hygiene, you're going to have to explain to me how this could really affect your teeth worse than most other foods (which are usually also slightly acidic).

Lentils don't agree with a lot of people due to taste, texture and/or flatulence.

However, the people who don't eat lentils probably wouldn't touch ground insect meat either.

Aside from the other points made here, many bugs are ecologically cheaper to produce per unit of nutrition. A quick google brings up a (probably biased) article:

http://www.rainbowmealworms.net/blog/why-we-need-to-eat-bugs...

I used to have some other references that were a bit more scientific, but I can't seem to track those down.

Lobsters too. Can you imagine steaming and eating a two-pound cockroach? But that's basically what a lobster is.

I predict that techniques will be found to make good plant-based meat substitutes or other artificial meat before anyone figures out how to make us happy with eating insects.

> Can you imagine steaming and eating a two-pound cockroach? But that's basically what a lobster is.

Cockroaches are insects. Lobsters are not. There is a huge difference there.

They meet up much closer in the evolutionary tree than things like pigs or cows. What exactly is the huge difference? They seem fairly similar overall, aside from size and where they live.

But not as different as, say, lobsters and cows. Lobsters and Cockroaches are both nocturnal, omnivorous, scavenging, arthropods.

This is an absurd comparison in the context of food. When it comes to eating animals, we (Westerners) are used to eating muscle tissue. Cows and lobsters have large, edible muscles that can be separated from the rest of the body for consumption, cockroaches do not.

Not even if scaled up to the size of a lobster?

I have no idea about the cockroach's muscle:body ratio relative to commonly eaten animals. But again, this is following an absurdist line of argument.

Our culture will produce many food science innovations before we get around to engineering lobster sized cockroaches. (And even if we did, you are likely back to square 1 in terms of eating large, environmentally inefficient animals for protein.)

Insects are more closely related to lobsters and shrimp than they are to spiders and millipedes, and genetic studies suggest that insects evolved from crustaceans:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthropod#Classification

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pancrustacea

Mycoprotien

Lobsters are closely related to Spiders... yet are considered a delicacy. I even think to my self as I eat lobster, "spider, spider, spider" yet I never get grossed out at eating it. On the other hand I can barely hold a spider much less eat one...

> ... yet are considered a delicacy.

But they haven't _always_ been considered a delicacy: http://www.pri.org/stories/2014-09-06/heres-how-low-rent-lob...

Lobsters are, once you get inside them, just chunks of very uniform "meat" that has very little trace of where it originated. If we could find two-pound spiders, boil them, and serve their cracked-open legs on a plate, people would probably be just fine with eating those.

Calling Phnom Penh: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fried_spider

I just threw up a little. That's pretty much my nightmare.

Really? I think it looks delicious.

Depends on the part of the spider. While you may not recognize where the meat comes from, if it's the abdomen of the spider then you probably would not enjoy it at all.

These guys are working on cricket bars as a protein source:

https://www.exoprotein.com/

(No affiliation, they were a few desks over at a coworking space)

Chapulines[1], a form of fried grasshopper, are already a popular dish in Oaxaca. I've had them, they're tasty, a bit like salty, earthy, not very meaty crab I guess. In fact, there's already a cricket bar based off of this dish[2]. Americans in general are pretty squeamish about their food, but this is not true in many other parts of the world. See tripe, chocolate meat (dinuguan), balut, etc.

1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chapulines 2 http://chapul.com/

Ok, having seen balut, I'd starve before I ate that.

That is a great idea... I've never tried eating bugs, and while I'd like to think that I could get over the stigma and try it, I know that I would have no problem eating them after they have been ground up into a meal, and worked into something tasty.

That said, I was about to buy a box just to check them out, when I saw their crustacean allergy warning... I hadn't even thought of that, and I am most certainly allergic to all of the crustaceans that Americans normally eat, so I might well be allergic to other arthropods.

I used to go out and catch some crickets just for snacks when I was little back in my hometown. I don't think they're that bad. A little much can make you dizzy though (dunno why).

Where did you grow up?

I ordered a box recently and they're not bad, as energy bars go. A little too sweet for my taste.

>For some reason shrimp which are essentially bugs are no problem because (I think) they come from the ocean, so there's an obvious mental line that can dissassociate them from other bugs.

Generally, we eat the innards, not the exoskeleton.

At a Japanese noodle place in NYC, my wife and I were served shrimp with our miso ramen, with the exoskeleton still in place (you were meant to peel and eat it yourself).

My wife wanted no part of it, although she likes shrimp with the eyeballs and antenna and stuff already removed. Go figure.

If properly deep-fried, the entire shrimp is edible, head and all.

If you ever watched Fear Factor, you might remember that pretty much anything is edible, including blended raw cow eyeballs and such :) It's always a matter of whether it's enjoyable.

Michelle Lotito air an aircraft and several bicycles.

Ha, interesting - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Lotito

I (and many others) eat school prawns shell/head/tail and all. It's common in Greece. Here's an example recipe:

http://www.gourmettraveller.com.au/recipes/recipe-search/fea...

When a prawn tail has been shelled (but tail left on for presentation) and in tempura, I will eat the tail also.

Cannibal!

I've eaten whole prawns on several occasions with no complaints. If they're prepared properly (fried in a batter) then they're quite tasty.

For the record, a soldier fly is about as closely related to a shrimp as you are to a Cod. Same phylum, different class.

Hmm. multiple legs, exoskeleton, antenna. To the uninitiated person they share a lot more in common than I do to a Cod. We're not talking science here but perception.

> "Maybe processing the grubs/flies into something less recognizable would help, but at some point you read the ingredients and you're back at square one."

How many of the ingredients do you currently understand? Just use the latin name of the insect and no-one would notice. Given the yield, I can imagine that we'll be eating a lot of insects in the future and in many parts of the world larvae/insects are not a problem at all.

"Processed protein meal" "Amino acid complex (source: ${latin name here})" "Debuggified bugs"

Lots of potential naming zaniness here. Pretty sure food scientists and marketers have this down to a...science?

In fact, insect byproducts are already used in food production. Carmine is a red food dye made from the scales of a particular bug: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmine

I disagree about processing them into something less recognizable would prevent people from having them. No one actually cares reading about contents products especially if you can have in something like medicine.

I have great difficulty eating shrimp and have zero desire to eat lobster or crab, precisely because of the insect-like association.

At first I was totally grossed out by the though of the entire process. It's tough to see how the sausage is made, tougher still with the cultural aversion to eating bugs. Then I watched the video where they are frying up the bugs in the pan, and though "How can they be so thoughtless to use metal on a non-stick pan"! So perhaps I'm past my aversion to eating bugs! Maybe not.

And, then eating out of the non-stick pan with a metal fork! Absolutely disgusting. I couldn't look away.

I just went back to watch that video to judge them on their metal utensil usage. I'm still weirded out by eating bugs though.

If those are anodized non-stick pans, using metal utensils is perfectly fine.

The key to successfully introducing insects into the western diet is processing. Processing to remove the chitin exoskeleton (which can be saved and used for making non-edible objects), and processing to remove the product from the direct image of an insect. If you scatter some fried cockroaches over a salad you'll get a some brave souls who will say "eh, crunchy, but not bad"; if you process cockroaches to a 'meat patty' or sausage or 'protein bar' then the large majority would give it an honest try enough to become regular customers.

I've realized this breaks a willful ignorance I have over animal-based food. Coming from afar, I can put aside the realities of meat eating and imagine chickens and cows dancing hand in hand in a lush green field enjoying their short lives.. (and yes, I can do this, otherwise I'd be a vegetarian.)

With Farm 432 in my kitchen, however, the idea of life multiplying to keep my belly full is right in my face. How sickeningly first world.. :-) I actually wondered if it was a project designed to evoke such reflection.

I have gone flexitarian for this reason. As someone concerned with global warming, I found it troubling to eat meet regularly. Couple that with industrial agriculture and that did it for me. If its at someones place I won't make a big deal, but I basically won't buy meat unless its particularly hard to get around. Even then its pretty much only fish and chicken...

I've always found this fish-is-holier-than-red-meat take a bit confusing. Overfishing is a huge problem worldwide. Eating responsibly farmed beef, while expensive, seems less impactful than eating many (most?) types of commonly consumed fish.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/01/07/w...

Responsibly farmed usually refers to ethical treatment and has nothing to do with CO2. That being said, I am totally in agreement that eating fish has pretty substantial problems. The thing is that fish more wholistically face problems resulting from global warming including coral bleaching and ocean acidification to name a few. Overfishing and harvesting of marine life in nonsustainable ways is just that, but if you are selective about the species and the source it makes a big difference.

Indeed there are many different kinds of impacts to consider. For instance if you look at CO2 emission per kilo of food, beef emits apparently more than two times more than farmed salmon and more than four times more than canned tuna (source: http://static.ewg.org/reports/2011/meateaters/pdf/methodolog...).

This is so weird. Are people really so set on eating animal protein that they'd rather eat insects than just eat plants?

Yes, this is incredibly more efficient than eating most animal products, but so are plant-based foods, which already exist, taste pretty good, and most importantly, are not completely and utterly revolting.

People in developing countries don't have the luxury of access to the variety of different plants you need to make a vegetarian diet work.

What gave you that idea? The overwhelming majority of India is vegetarian

Yeah, no: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetarianism_by_country#India

31% isn't an overwhelming majority. Plus you're saying that India should be the standard for scarcity of vegetables, which it clearly isn't.

And also (to visual inspection) malnourished. At least, that was my impression when I was there.

And you think they're going to be able to buy this contraption?

What about taste? While bugs are a great source of protein, we don't eat foods primarily based on nutrition, we eat food based on taste.

I know Huhu or Witchetty grubs taste similar to peanut butter. And while peanut butter is nice and all, I want me some rich (but sustainable) beefy taste.

https://edibug.wordpress.com/list-of-edible-insects/

There are a couple of bugs listed, I couldn't find anything about beefy tastes though. Perhaps, it can be achieved with artificial flavors?

I've gone to a couple vegetarian restaurants where they've made some pretty convincing "beef", "chicken", "duck", and "pork" out of tofu, so why not insects?

But how were the insects raised, farmed and killed? Was it insectane?

I think the idea is that insects are so far down on the animal scale. For example, they don't really have pain [0]. At some point we have to relate animals to robotics. And insects are so low on the scale of intelligence it might as well be below our currently technology (Watson merely being massive specialized application of our current technology).

Where as animals like cows have emotions, can feel pain, have memory, personalities, relationships, etc. They are better than our current AI software in many ways.

[0] http://relaximanentomologist.tumblr.com/post/51301520453/do-...

I ate termites from a nest in Honduras. They were actually pretty good, I thought that tasted a lot like peanut butter. Though, they're pretty small and non-offensive, as far as eating bugs goes.

Mopane worms (which are caterpillars) taste like barbecued meat. Honestly, if you added Mopane meat to sausages I doubt many people would know the difference.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonimbrasia_belina

Reminds me of the movie Snowpiercer, where there is a scene with an industrial size device that creates protein bars from insects.

Geez, spoiler aler... never mind...

Specifically some type of cockroach, no?

That's the first thing I thought of as well when I saw this, especially once I got down to this image:

http://static.squarespace.com/static/53d17b47e4b0d5933c1e4a4...

For those in the Bay Area, I highly recommend checking out Don Bugito. They've done a great job of making insects palatable for the uninitiated. Everyone I've taken to their food stand at Off the Grid has ended up trying some bugs (despite insisting they would not). You can also buy them pre-packaged at the Ferry Building. http://www.donbugito.com/

Seems like a great source of protein for animals. Would be interesting way to feed chickens.

EnviroFlight is trying to do exactly that (create animal feed):

http://www.inc.com/magazine/201406/bernhard-warner/envirofli...

That's what I kept thinking when I read this. They're trying to replace the whole protein supply chain, but why not trying to supplement it without alienating food culture?

Definitely makes me think of the scene from Snowpiercer (spoiler alert) when they discover the protein blocks they eat are made of cockroaches.

Austin, TX is at the cutting edge of the edible insect trend in the states. I had the pleasure of grabbing some mead and enjoying some snacks with a bunch of the companies down there.

Anyone doing anything with cricket-based foods in the US is likely supplied by World Ento (which recently merged with Aspire International). They're building a massive cricket farm in ATX to try to keep up with the demand.

Why not just let the animals pasture and eat grass instead of feeding them grain? Factory farms are the big problem.

Pasture-raised beef still uses an obscene amount of water compared to every other protein we eat, by a very large margin.

Pardon my possible ignorance, but shouldn't all water consumed in the process be recycled when the cows + humans urinate? Water doesn't just disappear.

True, but it doesn't immediately become potable. If you're in, say, California where water usage vastly outstrips rainfall, the amount of water you consume is very important. All the water beyond what you get naturally has to be run through expensive purification and transportation.

That's why you shouldn't eat Californian cows. Import them.

In the long term their waste will become potable water. But in the near term it pollutes water.

Also the water source makes a big difference. Letting cows graze doesn't really impact anyone's water supply. Grains are less efficient.

>>Factory farms are the big problem.

Is it wrong to say that factory farms are efficient and therefore less of a strain on resources?

Basically, "the cheaper the better." That's not how I evaluate food choices since it is so closely tied to health and so quality is important in addition to cost.

There are plenty of other times other than food when "the cheaper the better" is not true.

They're cost efficient, not "resource efficient".

how is there a difference? less cost = less capital = less resources.

Water is cheap.

Human capital. Fertile ground is better used for food crops rather than animal feed crops. Marginal land is most efficient for grazing livestock. But hill farmed livestock is labour intensive and skilled dirty uncomfortable work to boot. Labour is expensive.

> skilled dirty uncomfortable work

Grew up on a farm on marginal land. Actually liked it.

They're only correlated up to a point. If you optimize for cost, you'll end up at a different maximum than if you optimize for resource usage.

Because there is no conceivable way to feed the world on pasture animals. There just aren't enough resources.

Factory farms are the big problem because they're the entire industry. There is absolutely no way to feed people at anywhere near the current consumption levels with pasture-raised animals.

I grew up around cattle and back then there was no question that grain-finished beef produced the best quality for the buyer. It is incredibly fascinating to me to see how the marketing of grass-fed meat has actually changed taste preferences enough that we even question why we use grain today.

I'd always heard that it was cost that drove grain finishing, nothing to do with taste. Is that a myth? After all, grain finishing is a bit of a strange thing to do with animals that can't digest it well naturally, on the face of it.

One thing people often miss is that besides not looking very appetizing, some bugs don't really taste that great either. Well, it's more to do with the fact that they're just very bland or bitter. But, some animals are exactly the same. The reason that lamb, beef and chicken tastes "good" to us is because a: we've grown accustomed to the taste, and b: they've been farmed to be palatable (breeding, diets etc).

In Japan, some fish are given special diets to alter their flavour. I don't see why we can't do the same with insects and worms.

http://en.rocketnews24.com/2013/10/28/a-little-citrus-for-yo...

If you're concerned about your CO2 footprint, one thing you can do without going as far as eating bugs is eliminating beef from your diet and eating only poultry. Minimal impact on your diet and about twice as efficient.

I am pretty into high-end foodstuffs and really anything that tastes good, so I am somewhat surprised that my inner self says "bring on the bugs!". I think it would be kinda cool to eat an entirely new source of protein and know that I'm being just a tiny bit more sustainable.

Plus once in a while I get some pang of guilt about factory farming. Not gonna happen with cockroaches; I'm pretty sure there is no possible world where I develop sympathy for an insect.

The widespread irrational disgust shamelessly expressed here, without regard for how expressing that disgust out loud is enforcing the status quo and contributing to the prevention of this ever being accepted in the mainstream, is exactly how I imagine the pervasiveness of homophobia in past generations.

...Which I think is a good thing, because it means it can be eliminated through a cultural shift assisted by mass media.

Homophobia has not been eliminated and nearly everyone here expressing disgust has also stated that they realize their disgust is irrational.

Is insect protein better or more nutritious then protein directly from a plant?

Are we considering this more humane because the creatures are smaller? You're still trapping hundreds of living beings into a tiny container. Don't get me wrong -- I eat meat and consider it ultimately a natural part of life. I just don't understand why flies are somehow okay to trap and confine, but cows aren't.

Obviously more of an art project than anything else, but a brilliant direction to focus our thinking on. Insect protein really is a good direction to grow our meat consumption in, and if at first “toy” projects like this mostly provoke disgust, I hope in 25-50 years they will be in a very different position.

"Farm 432" would be a great title for a dystopian science fiction novel. I'm imagining a fictional future Soviet Union where the citizens are fed with insect products from collective farms simply named "Farm #".

Maybe because of Fahrenheit 451?

I think it's more about the idea of grouping humans together by a generic number.

"Why Not Eat Insects?" published by Vincent M. Holt in 1885, including recipes and menu suggestions:

http://bugsandbeasts.com/whynoteatinsects/

The "Farm 432: Function" video is good. What raised my eyebrow is two larvae from the harvest trap are selected for the next generation.

How do you know which gender the larvae will be? Would the inbreeding cause issues?

I could see myself buying and using the device, but not eating the worms myself... The worms would feed pets and aquaponics fishes. Cats an dogs have little in a way of yuck factor. Fishes even less.

My cat will eat spiders and flies and then will say yuck when I serve her up some gourmet fish in jelly. "I had this exact same flavour last week!"

Fish -> nitrogen -> plants -> compost -> worms -> chicken/fish

The impending insect protein era, for some reason reminds me of Peak-oil. Unless there is some marketing genius that makes eating insects sexy and drinking them cool, we will not usher into that era.

Oh, please, foraging for plants around cities has become trendy among the foodies.

A little marketing, a famous chef, and presto instant delicacy.

I love that this is being discussed. I've often spoken to friends of the cultural cognitive dissonance Americans exhibit in being repulsed by eating terrestrial bugs, but loving shrimp, crab and lobster. Many Americans never see a whole shrimp and don't even realize that they have a bunch of antennae, legs, a head and would be considered completely horrifying to eat if they lived on land. Eating insects such as crickets is quite common in Mexico. Personally, I will stick to kidney beans and rice.

I think it may be because we don't eat the crab or lobster shell and all (although some eat shrimp shell). It may help widespread acceptance if there was a process where the meat was separated and made into some type of insect hamburger that could be texturized and flavored.

Eating crab out of its shell (sometimes they even take crab meat and put it in another crab's shell before selling it) is very common where I live. Is that really not done in the US?

Crabs are eaten whole, shell and all, in the US - just only right after molting when they are called "soft-shell crabs." Come to Maryland during soft shell season, and you'll see them on every menu.

If you're down with eating disgusting things and only interested in nutritional value why bother with insects and not skip directly down to algae/bacteria - my guess is since these are simple organisms they can be genetically engineered for mass production with low maintenance and "tweaked" for desired nutritional values. Risks of disease sound much lower too.

At an earlier point in our evolutionary history we no doubt ate plenty of insects. Grubs, grasshoppers, crickets, ants, termites... pretty much whatever we could get our hands on.

This practice was generally discarded by humanity except for niche pockets here and there.

Why? I mean... there must be a reason humans (for the most part) stopped eating insects.

Insects are eaten in most of the world. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entomophagy

Catching insects in the wild is very labor-intensive per kilogram of protein obtained, and so is trying to farm them in a pasture. Obviously this insect farm solves that problem.

Even if they just ground up so they are unrecognizable and added into other foods, that would be a huge accomplishment. Imagine getting 5% of your calories from insect sources, without knowing, an it replacing something like starch. It could be added to virtually anything.

Maybe as an ingredient for breakfast cereals, muesli bars and things like that?

The article mentions killing by freezing. Does freezing change the texture of the bugs?

It might just be an efficient way of killing them that everyone can use. According to 'Insects Are Food': http://www.insectsarefood.com/recipes.html

"Prior to preparing your crickets for a meal place them inside a plastic container or storage bag and keep them in the refrigerator at least for an hour or until you are ready to use them. This will not kill the crickets, but rather slow down their metabolism, inducing a state of hypothermia, in other words, prohibiting their movement when removed from container. If you prefer however, as many people do, feel free to place them inside the freezer for an hour or two as this will definitely kill them, guaranteeing their immobility.

After removing from refrigerator or freezer, place them in a pot of boiling water sized to hold the specific amount of crickets you’re using. Add a few pinches of salt. Boil for about two minutes. This ensures cleanliness. Once boiled, remove from water and let cool. Crickets at this time can be placed in storage bags and kept in the freezer or used right away for any number of recipes. All crickets should be prepared in this manner prior to eating."

There also appears to be discussion of what the most human way to kill farmed insects is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_of_farmed_insects

Right, but I am wondering if the taste or texture is noticeably different.

Thanks for this fantastic answer Steve. Comment of the week!

Horrified at that second video. You can't use a metal fork on a nonstick pan!

Yup not eating insects anytime soon :) The device looks cool though.

I'll keep waiting for cultured meat, thank you very much. Now excuse me as I attempt to use needles to purge the sight of those 'meals' from my retina.

I would totally buy this. I don't mind eating insects.

Here are some protein bars made form Cricket flour for you to munch on in the meantime: https://www.exoprotein.com/

With fish stocks and aquifers fast depleting, it seems inevitable that it'll become normal for citizens of the developed world to dine on bugs.

The funny thing for me — it is less the insects that are off putting and more the sterile environment they are raised in.

Really cool. I would definitely be interested in trying this out depending on the price point.

My mouth was salivating while reading the website. I think I'm ready to eat bugs.

i'm trying to wrap my head around this, but im leaning towards engineering vegetables with high protein... or enhancing nut production.

probably the insects were the first source of protein for the humanity

Why not just go vegan? Pulses are relatively easy to grow and have great nutrition.

This is gross! Humans should be consuming less animal protein, not inventing more new efficient ways to breed, torture and consume more.

How about considering sustainable vegan/vegetarianism before inventing personal bug death cathedrals. Sick and wrong. Burn it!

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