How can we make the world more sustainable

Farm raised insects such as crickets are grown at very clean indoor farms. Many common foodborne pathogens do not seem to be present at these farms to date: or example, in one study Salmonella, Staph, E. coli and Listeria were not found in samples of the following commercially farmed cricket and mealworm species: (Zoophobas morio, Tenebrio molitor, Galleria mellonella, and Acheta domesticus) (Superworm, Mealworm, Waxworm and House Cricket, Respectively) (Giaccone 2005). Additionally, to date, All Things Bugs LLC, via our research grant projects (over $750,000 to date!), has not found Eschericha coli, Salmonella sp., Staphylococcus aureus, or Listeria sp. in any of several shipments of raw frozen insects from some of US cricket and mealworm farms, and coliform/total plate count is reasonably low. Also, pasteurization appears to reduce total plate count to very low and possibly nearly sterile levels. Additionally, insects are biologically more separated from humans than vertebrate livestock, so the risk of an insect viral pathogen or parasite jumping to humans is exceedingly low (van Huis et al., 2013). Thus, pathogen risk appears to be very low for farmed insects.

GET THE LATEST INFORMATION

On the latest technology in sustainable foods & agriculture

"*" indicates required fields

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.