On the outskirts of Jinan, capital of eastern Shandong province, one company has employed billions of cockroaches to feed on over 50 tonnes of kitchen waste. Shandong Qiaobin Agricultural Technology Co uses the pest to feast on their kitchen waste by feeding them through pipes into their cells, giving them nutritional value. The cockroaches can then be sold to farms to feed livestock. Some say the cockroaches can even be used for beauty treatments and to cure stomach illness.

Liu Yusheng, president of Shandong Insect Industry Association said: “Cockroaches are a bio-technological pathway for the converting and processing of kitchen waste.

“It’s like turning trash into resources.”

As China’s urban cities continue to expand, food waste accumulates leading to more trash in landfills.

Now, some Chinese companies have come up with a solution to get rid of their food scraps, while providing nutritious food for livestock.

Chinese companies are now using cockroaches to clear food waste from landfills (Image: REUTERS)

Pigs were previously used to help curb food waste landfills, but are no longer employed after swine flu broke out.

One company in a remote village of Sichuan, China farms billions of cockroaches to supply the increasing demand.

Li Bingcai, 47, owns two cockroach farms, breeding over 3.4 million cockroaches.

He said: “People think it’s strange that I do this kind of business.

A farm in Sichuan is now breeding cockroaches to supply the increasing demand (Image: REUTERS)

“It has great economic value, and my goal is to lead other villagers to prosperity if they follow my lead.”

Mr Li hopes to expand his two cockroach farms to 20 operational facilities across the country.

Another company in Sichuan, called Gooddoctor, is rearing six billion cockroaches.

Wen Jianguo, manager of Gooddoctor’s cockroach facility said: “The essence of cockroach is good for curing oral and peptic ulcers, skin wounds and even stomach cancer.”

Shandong Qiaobin Agriculture Technology’s waste processing facility using cockroaches (Image: REUTERS)

At Gooddoctor, when cockroaches reach the end of their lifespan of about six months, they are blasted by steam, washed and dried, before being sent to a huge nutrient extraction tank.

Asked about the chance of the cockroaches escaping, Wen said that would be worthy of a disaster movie but that he has taken precautions.

“We have a moat filled with water and fish,” he said. “If the cockroaches escape, they will fall into the moat and the fish will eat them all.”

Source: Express.co