The crushed bodies of a Central and South American insect, called the Cochineal, produces a natural red dye.
They are used for textiles, food-coloring, and cosmetics. Next time you see an ingredients list that includes carmine, cochineal extract or natural red 4, it comes from these bugs.
Ateam has managed to bioengineer a fungi to produce it, but with very low yields. Another team has managed to get e coli to produce it, they estimated that a 100,000 L fermenter could produce the same amount as a hectare of land.
100,000L is 100m^3 which is a cube with 4.7m side length. ~15'x15'x15' or uhh ~~~the size of 4 F150s.
Edit to add: a hectare is 100m x 100m ie ~100 yards x 100 yards.
Vegetarians of Lemmy, what's your thoughts on this? I've known about this for a while, but I'm looking for gelatin on that ingredients list, not bugs - I genuinely don't care, there's probably trace bugs in there regardless, lol.
I can't be bothered to that degree. I'll watch for gelatin. And if I knew which thing to look for, I might avoid this as well. But I don't care enough to go out of my way and learn.
Killing with intent is where I draw the line. Bugs were very important in our journey to understand brains and thus deserve some respect as a cognitive being imo.