Why are cockroach farms so numerous and profitable in China?

In China, cockroach breeding is a more common and much bigger phenomenon than you might think. Massive cockroach farms are profit-making at a low cost, because they are kept simply and quickly by the very nature of the vermin. The only question remains – who is buying these hundreds of tons of cockroaches?

Known as “eating the future”, insects are a dormer business for many. Many Chinese cockroach farms confirm this

The largest cockroach breeding facility in the world is located in Xichang and, according to data from 2018, produces six billion cockroaches annually. The insects, which are naturally high in protein, are processed and used in the production of animal feed and various medicinal products. It is hard to believe, but there is a huge demand in China for the “healing concoction” of cockroaches, which is used every year by thousands of hospitals and millions of Chinese patients to treat, among others, respiratory and gastric diseases (via Interested Engineering).

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Additionally, these protein-rich insects are also processed and fed as livestock feed, used to dispose of food waste (cockroaches will eat virtually anything), and eaten by humans in some Chinese restaurants. As a result, the value of the business around cockroaches continues to increase, encouraging many people to breed them. This practice is not (yet) an illegal practice, but it is easy to get into trouble by setting it up in a densely populated residential area, for example.