I work at a farm that produces live feed, mostly for pet stores and zoos. I've been working there full-time for a year-ish, amd I have experience with the production of Tenebrio spp. (mealworm beetles), Galleria spp. (waxworm moths), and Acheta spp. (house crickets). This includes every stage of the life cycle: egg + larva + pupa + adult for the "worms", and egg + nymph + adult for the crickets. The "worms" are sold as larvae for optimum nutritional value and trophic return-on-input, whereas the crickets are sold as adults. My job is one of the "dirty jobs" at the farm. Well, everyone's job there is dirty, but I'm one of the ones scooping feed, breathing clouds of bug shit, handling the product and sometimes having it crawl all over us, being swarmed by moths and beetles and flies, and dodging cockroaches. It's not as terrible as it might sound but it's definitely not clean.

This is a throwaway account that I'll be checking as much as I can today and tomorrow and maybe Monday too. I do not do push notifications or phone notifications and I'm not extremely online enough to respond to everything within 5 minutes, but I'll be logged on at least once an hour for this today. I will respond to every single question if I can, it just might take awhile. If you know or have an inkling of what my main is, shh, plz dun dox. After this AMA is complete I may abandon this account, I only made it for this (plus the bit).

To clear a few things up, YES, I have eaten the product, and YES, I do have a deep hatred for the careerist, corporate-ladder-climbing administrative class. Any other resemblences to a similar username are coincidental.

-WwF

  • wax_worm_futures [comrade/them]
    ·
    3 years ago

    I am not concerned about farmed insect welfare the way I am concerned about farmed vertebrate welfare. For one thing, it's dubious as to whether insects have any feelings beyond "something is appealing" and "something is going wrong". For another, mostly due to their size, it's a lot easier to provide an insect with everything it needs to live well. Some larvae are well-accustomed to squirming all over each other while they eat plant matter and fatten up for metamorphosis. Keeping birds and mammals in enclosures 1.5 body lengths long, though, or in barns where they barely have enough room to stand, is fiendish.

    Years ago I had my first taste of roasted spiced crickets and cricket cookies. We'd have to become an order of magnitude more efficient to be able to make them a major part of people's diets, though. But I'm not saying it's impossible.

    • Owl [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      Yeah, I also don't really value insect lives as highly as vertebrates' lives. But I know there are people who think it's abhorrent to draw that distinction. So, for their sake, I think your second point - that it's also just comparatively easy to care for bugs - matters quite a bit.

      • wax_worm_futures [comrade/them]
        ·
        3 years ago

        If we don't have a value system where we appraise things by their degree of consciousness, then the logical conclusion is that nothing should be allowed to predate anything else, and the only beings allowed to exist are autotrophs. And that probably means an end to all cognition unless we turn ourselves into sentient robots.

        I could go on, but it would involve turning over some very uncomfortable big-picture thoughts... has this been BMF enough for you?

        • Nagarjuna [he/him]
          ·
          3 years ago

          I mean, we can acknowledge a broken world and still try to live as best we can. I'm vegan because I know that I'll kill fewer total lives (including plants) as a vegan than a carnist.

          That said, I like your argument that the bugs lead better lives on a farm than in the wild, it's an interesting thought to play with

          • wax_worm_futures [comrade/them]
            ·
            3 years ago

            because I know that I’ll kill fewer total lives (including plants)

            This is getting uncomfortably close to the longtermist discourse.

            Bringing the wolves back to Yellowstone... good or bad?

            • Nagarjuna [he/him]
              ·
              3 years ago

              What is longtermism?

              Bringing the wolves back to yellowstone is good because it helps the community of animates thrive. Plants, Animals, and waterways and landforms don't suffer less because certain populations are allowed to explode and then collapse like in the absence of apex predators, instead they contend with mass starvation.

              The difference is that humans aren't stabilizing environments by raising cattle, they're doing the opposite and contributing to suffering within and without the environments they've created.

              I feel differently about grain fed beef where you're raising corn to die for cows and sustainably ranged cattle where you're forcing them to act like deer by moving them from pasture to pasture. That can actually allow for greater diversity in the ecosystems they're ranged in for the same reason that non anthropogenic predation does.

              The trouble is, I've seen enough irresponsible ranging in my time as a guide that even the gold standard of ethical meat doesn't meet my standards.

              I know that's a hella multilayered argument, and I hope I was clear, but realize i might not have been

              • wax_worm_futures [comrade/them]
                ·
                3 years ago

                Ultra-utilitarian philosophy that largely revolves around the suggestion that we should figure out how to make a reasonably happy sentient life, and then make as many of those lives as possible. Transhumanism meets Quiverfull meets Roko's Basilisk.

                https://hexbear.net/post/147971

                I agree with you about Yellowstone, I just was wondering how you would deal with the prospect of "less of A means more of B which means less of C which means more of D..." and vice versa.

                • Mardoniush [she/her]
                  ·
                  3 years ago

                  To clarify, most people would say a long term future full of people having a massively good time is something to aim for, at least in a vague sense.

                  Longtermists say that having uncountably more people living a life just very very veeeery slightly better than death could be even better as long as you breed enough people for it to make the total amount of pleasure higher.

                  I'd like to point out many transhumanists, even very radical ones do in fact find this an abhorrent conclusion, and really only Robin Hanson and assorted silicon valley vampires take it seriously...

                  • wax_worm_futures [comrade/them]
                    ·
                    3 years ago

                    Once you reach a certain number of people, it becomes harder and harder for them to have a really good time while being fully cognizant beings.

                    Consider the Tinder effect, where the more people you have access to, the less likely you are to make deep connections with people.

                    This sentiment often gets taken the wrong way, but I really believe we should limit how many there are of us. Unlike eco-fascists, though, I think we should equitably taper off population growth and then have a fertility rate of 1.6-1.9 until the population shrinks back down to 2 or 3 billion, before bringing it back up to 2.01 (or whatever trajectory might be needed for a transhuman species).

                • Nagarjuna [he/him]
                  ·
                  3 years ago

                  I mean, I'm definitely a utilitarian by impulse, but I also think that you should never take an argument to its absolute conclusion unless you're getting paid to by the academy, and it's enough to say reducing suffering and killing is generally good.