UKC

Anyone try this?

Are there any vet concerns over this as a dog food constituent?

Ta (considering as its supposed to have a lower environmental footprint)

I tried some of insect based treats/ biscuit type things. Dog was unimpressed! Our dog isn't particularly into dry food anyway and this wasn't the proper food, so I wouldn't read too much into his reaction!

My old Lottie used to eat flies and spiders. Never did her any harm and she died old and fat.

She must have eaten a lot of flies!

Maybe it was these?

https://naturenet.net/blogs/2009/06/07/check-out-this-massive-fly/

(Looks like she was doing a public service if so!)

Starts off with a fly, next thing you know spider, then most likely a bird, then god knows what else.

Parents used to have a cat who liked to eat spiders, but always left the legs. Quite an impressive feat of dexterity with only paws and teeth to work with ...

That was Lottie (a cat by the way). If it moved it was fair game. You'd often see her tracking a tiny money spider across the carpet.

Dogs can happily eat a vegetarian diet. Growing insects, when you can feed them carrots etc. is a tad silly. I appreciate that insects are the eco friendly future, for you meat eaters. Perhaps they are laying the groundwork, for a locust burger. I'm guessing that the mechanically recovered meat, they used to use for dog food, has been redirected to hospitals, schools etc. This seems like a bit of a gimmick, incorporating more pointless death for profit.

I tried my three dogs with a free trial sachet of Bug Bakes. They look a bit like pony nuts. After a sniff, none would try them...not even the greedy collie.

I was curious, so had a taste. They were quite bitter.

One of ours when she was a puppy insisted on eating ants.  Bit worried that they'll take revenge should the ants, as some predict, take over the world.

My 17 year old, still in good shape, Collie cross has been fed on Yora, an insect food, for a number of years. However I do mix a small amount of raw meat with it occasionally. I also use a bit of warm water to help increase the ‘smell’ of the Yora food.

I'm not a meat eater myself.

But I'll give some meat to my dog. We do mix her food with veggie kibble and carrots but ots about 50:50.

So you're cheering on the cockroaches? Or tardigrades?

It would be quite tough to turn tardigrades into dog food...

What a strange post!

I would eat a locust burger, no problem, as long as it was seasoned and cooked properly - but then I could say the same about other meats. 

I admire your sense of adventure.

I think using insects as a food source is a solution looking for a problem.

tl;dr:

It’s an important stepping stone, especially where it comes to replacing unsustainable fishmeal – but it’s not actually attacking the problem itself,” she says. The problem being our insane overconsumption of meat.

https://www.theguardian.com/food/2021/may/08/if-we-want-to-save-the-planet-...

Gave some to the dog, he was proper buzzing

The problem is that demand for food (meat or plant based) will eventually outstrip supply - until we start cannibalism we are doomed, it is the only logical way we can survive - it would also help with reducing co2 emissions so also saving the planet 

Well, not the only way. The population could double and we'd still have a bit of wriggle room. However, we'd run out of land, water, clean air. Or kill ourselves fighting over resources, or because some country annoyed us etc.

A vegetarian diet requires two-and-a-half times less the amount of land needed to grow food, compared to a meat-based diet

https://vegsoc.org/info-hub/why-go-veggie/environment/

But dont let me put you off your bug burger. Hey, you could even have it bleed red stuff for effect, using cochineal.

VegSoc's propaganda should worry everyone. The seas of plastic and slave labour are just two areas they appear to ignore to factor in to their sustainability models:

Almeria (Costa del Polythene) - https://geographyfieldwork.com/CostadelPolythene.htm

Slavery - https://www.theguardian.com/business/2011/feb/07/spain-salad-growers-slaves...

My locally sourced organic beef is sustainable and the land it grows on is biodiverse in a way large swathes of Almeria cannot be.

I've got relatives who live in Almeria and I've seen the poly tunnels first hand. They are not like the nice neat poly tunnels you see in Holland. Sort of the agricultural equivalent to a sprawling shanty town. However...

If all the worlds vegetables were grown there, then I'd accept your point. Except that is not the case. I'd hazard a guess that even some of the most committed carnivores have some salad of dubious provenance on their plate, on occasion.

If we're gong to select examples of bad practice, then the factory farming of meat is pretty grim. Even without examples of bad practice. That's global, not just concentrated in one small area.

I saw what you did there.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/nov/06/dumped-fishing-gear-is-...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/21/such-brutality-tricked-into-s...

See, I didn't even mention mass killing wild animals and destroying their fishy habitat with bottom trawling. Or bycatch dumped because its over quota. Dead sea birds, dolphins, whales and other aquatic life caught up directly or indirectly. Or even microplastics and heavy metal pollution.

As I was saying, there's more than enough killing going on in the name of food. Lets not add to it, when we can use other existing, sustainable sources in more useful ways.

I'm a veterinarian and I would have zero issues feeding an insect based food, so long as it was nutritionally balanced (like every pet food should be) and palatable.  Animals need "nutrients not ingredients" as the saying goes.  As long as it's tasty, Fido doesn't care whether the protein source is crickets or chicken... 

Was insect farming the comparative meat model in this study? I would be extremely surprised if it formed any part of it. 

Lets face it too. A hell of a lot of insects are killed in veg growing.

Your later points on the sea are valid which is why I've hever understood piscitarians (dubious spelling).

I'd love to see resource analysis of insect farming and while it doesn't sit fully comfortable with me, there's a lot of difference in the experience of a large brained pig or chicken than a locust.

Poor farming methods are poor farming methods, pastoral or arable.

Vegetarianism pushes the killing to where it cannot be seen.

Australian mouse plagues  herbicides snd pesticides, nutrient run-off and eutrophication suffocating aquatic life, exposed soils from harvesting leadind to siltation of streams and rivers; all death is there.

Not much animal life can share space with a cropped field. A pastoral field is way more biodiverse.

'Natural' and evoved ecosystems host plant and animal life. If we want to mirror those we need the animal bit. That's the space for meat eating.

I'd recommend "Meat; A Benign Extravagance" by Simon Farley.