Daylong wastewater samples yield surprises

Rice method to find antibiotic-resistant genes shows limits of ‘snapshot’ samples, chlorination

Peer-Reviewed Publication

RICE UNIVERSITY

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IMAGE: RICE UNIVERSITY ENGINEERS COMPARED WASTEWATER “GRABS” TO DAYLONG COMPOSITE SAMPLES AND FOUND THE GRAB SAMPLES WERE MORE LIKELY TO RESULT IN BIAS IN TESTING FOR THE PRESENCE OF ANTIBIOTIC-RESISTANT GENES. view more 

CREDIT: STADLER RESEARCH GROUP/RICE UNIVERSITY

HOUSTON – (Dec. 19, 2022) – Testing the contents of a simple sample of wastewater can reveal a lot about what it carries, but fails to tell the whole story, according to Rice University engineers. 

Their new study shows that composite samples taken over 24 hours at an urban wastewater plant give a much more accurate representation of the level of antibiotic-resistant genes (ARGs) in the water. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), antibiotic resistance is a global health threat responsible for millions of deaths worldwide.

In the process, the researchers discovered that while secondary wastewater treatment significantly reduces the amount of target ARG, chlorine disinfectants often used in later stages of treatment can, in some situations, have a negative impact on water released back into the environment.

The lab of Lauren Stadler at Rice’s George R. Brown School of Engineering reported seeing levels of antibiotic-resistant RNA concentrations 10 times higher in composite samples than what they see in “grabs,” snapshots collected when flow through a wastewater plant is at a minimum.

Stadler and lead authors Esther Lou and Priyanka Ali, both graduate students in her lab, reported their results in the American Chemical Society journal Environmental Science & Technology: Water.

The results could lead to better protocols for treating wastewater to lower the prevalence of antibiotic-resistant genes in bacteria that propagate at plants and can transfer those genes to other organisms in the environment. 

The issue is critical because antibiotic resistance is a killer, causing an estimated 2.8 million infections in the U.S. every year, leading to more than 35,000 deaths, said Stadler, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering and a pioneer in the ongoing analysis of wastewater for signs of the SARS-CoV-2 virus responsible for COVID-19. 

Those statistics have made it a long-standing focus of efforts at Rice that led to the foundation of a new center, Houston Wastewater Epidemiology, a partnership with the Houston Health Department and Houston Public Works. The center is one of two designated by the CDC announced this year to develop tools and train other state and local health departments in the sciences of monitoring wastewater-borne diseases. 

The takeaway for testers is that snapshots can lead to unintended biases in their results, Stadler said. 

“I think it’s intuitive that grabbing a single sample of wastewater is not representative of what flows across the entire day,” said Stadler, who is also a faculty member of the Rice-based, National Science Foundation-supported Nanotechnology Enabled Water Treatment (NEWT) Center. “Wastewater flows and loads vary across the day, due to patterns of water use. While we know this to be true, no one had shown the degree to which antibiotic-resistant genes vary throughout the day.”

For the study, the Rice team took both grab and composite samples in two 24-hour campaigns, one during the summer and another during winter, at a Houston-area plant that routinely disinfects wastewater. 

They took samples every two hours from various stages of the wastewater treatment process and ran PCR tests in the lab to quantify several clinically relevant genes that confer resistance to fluoroquinolone, carbapenem, ESBL and colistin, as well as a class 1 integron-integrase gene known as a mobile genetic element (MGE) for its ability to move within a genome or transfer from one species to another.

The samples they collected allowed them to determine the concentration of ARGs and loads across a typical weekday, the variability in removal rates at plants based on the grab samples and the impact of secondary treatment and chlorine disinfection on the removal of ARGs, as well as the ability to compare grabs and composites.

The team found that the vast majority of ARG removal occurred due to biological processes as opposed to chemical disinfection. In fact, they observed that chlorination, used as the final disinfectant before the treated wastewater is discharged into the environment, may have selected for antibiotic-resistant organisms.

Because the results from snapshots can vary significantly during any given day, they had to be collected at a steady pace over 24 hours. That required Lou and Ali to spend several long shifts at the City of West University Place wastewater treatment plant. “They camped out,” Stadler said. “They set up their cots and ordered takeout.”

Such commitment will not be necessary if real-time wastewater monitoring becomes a reality. Stadler is part of a Rice collaboration developing living bacterial sensors that would detect the presence of ARGs and pathogens, including SARS-CoV-2, without pause at different locations within a wastewater system. The project underway at Rice to build bacterial sensors that emit an immediate electrical signal upon sensing a target was the subject of a study in Nature in November.

“Living sensors can enable continuous monitoring as opposed to relying on expensive equipment to collect composite samples that need to be brought back to the lab to analyze,” she said. “I think the future is these living sensors that can be placed anywhere in the wastewater system and report on what they see in real time. We’re working towards that.”

Rice undergraduate Karen Lu and Prashant Kalvapalle, a graduate student in the Systems, Synthetic and Physical Biology Ph. D. program, are co-authors of the study. 

The National Science Foundation (2029025, 1805901, 1932000) and a Johnson & Johnson WiSTEM2D award supported the research. 

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Read the abstract at https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsestwater.2c00467.

This news release can be found online at https://news.rice.edu/news/2022/daylong-wastewater-samples-yield-surprises.

Follow Rice News and Media Relations via Twitter @RiceUNews.

Related materials:

CDC names Houston Health Department, Rice a wastewater epidemiology Center of Excellence: https://news.rice.edu/news/2022/cdc-names-houston-health-department-rice-wastewater-epidemiology-center-excellence

Rice helps give Houston early COVID-19 warnings: https://news.rice.edu/news/2020/rice-helps-give-houston-early-covid-19-warnings

New nano strategy fights superbugs: https://news.rice.edu/news/2020/new-nano-strategy-fights-superbugs

Houston Wastewater Epidemiology: https://hou-wastewater-epi.org

Stadler Research Group: https://www.stadler.rice.edu

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering: https://cee.rice.edu

George R. Brown School of Engineering: https://engineering.rice.edu

Images for download:

https://news-network.rice.edu/news/files/2022/12/1219_WASTEWATER-1-WEB.jpg

Rice University engineers compared wastewater “grabs” to daylong composite samples and found the grab samples were more likely to result in bias in testing for the presence of antibiotic-resistant genes. (Credit: Stadler Research Group/Rice University)

https://news-network.rice.edu/news/files/2022/12/1219_WASTEWATER-2-web.jpg

Rice University graduate students Esther Lou, left, and Priyanka Ali are dressed for success as they embark upon testing of wastewater samples they collected at a Houston-area treatment plant. The students are co-authors of a study that determined wastewater “snapshots” lead to bias in testing for the presence of antibiotic resistant genes compared to daylong composite samples. (Credit: Stadler Research Group/Rice University)

https://news-network.rice.edu/news/files/2022/12/1219_WASTEWATER-3-web.jpg

CAPTION: Lauren Stadler. (Credit: Jeff Fitlow/Rice University)

Located on a 300-acre forested campus in Houston, Rice University is consistently ranked among the nation’s top 20 universities by U.S. News & World Report. Rice has highly respected schools of Architecture, Business, Continuing Studies, Engineering, Humanities, Music, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences and is home to the Baker Institute for Public Policy. With 4,240 undergraduates and 3,972 graduate students, Rice’s undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio is just under 6-to-1. Its residential college system builds close-knit communities and lifelong friendships, just one reason why Rice is ranked No. 1 for lots of race/class interaction and No. 1 for quality of life by the Princeton Review. Rice is also rated as a best value among private universities by Kiplinger’s Personal Finance.

  

Rice University graduate students Esther Lou, left, and Priyanka Ali are dressed for success as they embark upon testing of wastewater samples they collected at a Houston-area treatment plant. The students are co-authors of a study that determined wastewater “snapshots” lead to bias in testing for the presence of antibiotic resistant genes compared to daylong composite samples.

CREDIT

Stadler Research Group/Rice University

Rice University engineer Lauren Stadler and her team compared wastewater ‘snapshots’ to daylong composite samples and found snapshots lead to bias in testing for the presence of antibiotic-resistant genes.

CREDIT

Jeff Fitlow/Rice University

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JOURNAL

ACS ES&T Water

DOI

10.1021/acsestwater.2c00467 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Snapshot ARG Removal Rates across Wastewater Treatment Plants Are Not Representative Due to Diurnal Variations

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

15-Dec-2022

New research uncovers hidden long-term declines in UK earthworms

Reports and Proceedings

BRITISH ECOLOGICAL SOCIETY

 

IMAGE: A SONG THRUSH EATING AN EARTHWORM. view more 

CREDIT: EDMUND FELLOWES

British Trust of Ornithology researchers call for better monitoring of soil invertebrates after new research, collating 100 years of data, suggests significant and previously undetected declines in UK earthworm abundance could have occurred.

These preliminary results will be presented at the British Ecological Society’s annual meeting in Edinburgh on Monday 19th December by Professor James Pearce-Higgins, Director of Science at the British Trust of Ornithology (BTO).

Despite the importance of earthworms and other soil invertebrates for healthy ecosystems and fertile soils, there has historically been a lack of monitoring of their numbers. To overcome this, BTO researchers collated almost 100 years of scientific studies on soil invertebrate abundance and found evidence consistent with earthworm populations having declined.

Dr Ailidh Barnes of the BTO, who led this research, said “Changes in the UK countryside over the last century, such as extensive drainage, pesticide use and inorganic fertiliser application, are likely to have negatively affected earthworm populations”.

Professor Pearce-Higgins said: “Any large-scale decline in soil biodiversity - particularly the loss of earthworms - would sit alongside concerns about ‘insectaggedon’ and the wider biodiversity crisis. 

“We need to be concerned about what is happening to biodiversity below the ground in order to protect the biodiversity that we see above ground. We need to look after earthworms.”

Professor Pearce-Higgins added: “Thrushes, starlings and many waders that rely on soil invertebrates are in long-term decline, which may partly be linked to long-term changes in their food. These declines are greatest in south-east England where hotter, drier summers may also reduce the availability of earthworms to foraging birds.”

CAPTION

A Robin eating an earthworm

CREDIT

Liz Cutting

To explore changes in earthworm abundance in the absence of long-term monitoring data, the researchers collated data from over 100 historical studies across the UK, spanning almost 100 years. Accounting for variations in methods and study designs, the researchers used these data to see if through time, there was any evidence for changes in earthworm abundance.

Professor Pearce-Higgins said: “Whilst these data do not come from a proper monitoring scheme, our hope is that publishing this work will stimulate others to investigate what is happening to our soil invertebrates and establish proper monitoring. Given their importance, we need to monitor changes in the status of our soil invertebrates better than we have in the past.”

Professor Pearce-Higgins will present the work at the British Ecological Society annual meeting, which will bring together over 1200 ecologists to discuss the latest breakthroughs in ecology. This work is currently unpublished. 

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Making a bad thing worse: “Belief in just deserts” regarding COVID-19 infection

Researchers from Osaka University identify characteristics related to prejudice regarding COVID-19 infection

Peer-Reviewed Publication

OSAKA UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: PARTIAL CORRELATIONS FOR THE BELIEF IN JUST DESERTS AND HUMAN RIGHTS RESTRICTIONS. CONTROL VARIABLES: GENDER AND AGE. AREAS OF CIRCLES ARE PROPORTIONAL TO THE NUMBER OF RESPONDENTS (N). view more 

CREDIT: MICHIO MURAKAMI, KAI HIRAISHI, MEI YAMAGATA, DAISUKE NAKANISHI, ASAKO MIURA: BELIEF IN JUST DESERTS REGARDING INDIVIDUALS INFECTED WITH COVID-19 IN JAPAN AND ITS ASSOCIATIONS WITH DEMOGRAPHIC FACTORS AND INFECTION-RELATED AND SOCIO-PSYCHOLOGICAL CHARACTERISTICS: A CROSS-SECTIONAL STUDY, PEERJ, 2022, DECEMBER.10.7717/PEERJ.14545 URL: HTTPS://PEERJ.COM/ARTICLES/14545/

Osaka, Japan – perceptions of the causes of illness vary widely across the global population. But now, researchers from Japan have found new information about the perception that individuals with COVID-19 deserved to get infected.

In a study recently published in PeerJ, researchers from Osaka University have revealed that opinions about government restrictions regarding public safety were significantly associated with attitudes about COVID-19 patients.

“Belief in Just worlds” is the idea that we live in a just world where individuals receive the rewards or punishments they deserve. When applied to the idea of illness, “belief in just deserts” reflects an individual’s feeling that a person who is ill deserved it because of previous decisions they had made. In the context of the COVID-19 global pandemic, attitudes about illness can have important consequences for patients, as well as for the public health system. However, little is known about characteristics influencing the belief in just deserts regarding COVID-19 infection among Japanese individuals, which the researchers at Osaka University aimed to address.

 “A previous study indicated that individuals in Japan were more likely than those in other countries to believe that COVID-19 patients deserved to be infected,” says Asako Miura, senior author. “Because this psychological characteristic could promote prejudice against COVID-19 patients, we wanted to investigate the characteristics associated with this belief.”

To do this, the researchers conducted an online questionnaire survey of 1,207 respondents in Japan aged 20–69 years. They examined the relationship between the belief in just deserts and demographic variables, as well as infection-related and socio-psychological characteristics.

“The results were surprising,” explains lead author of the study Michio Murakami. “We found that individuals who strongly agreed with government restrictions on individual behavior during public emergencies were more likely to believe in just deserts.”

Men were also slightly more likely to believe in just deserts than women. Furthermore, participants who thought it was unlikely that the average Japanese individual would become infected with COVID-19 had low levels of belief in just deserts.

Given that perceptions regarding the deservingness of illness can lead to discrimination toward patients and can even expand to include prejudice against entire ethnic or occupational groups, this information may be used to address harmful attitudes affecting public health. Specifically, the foundational information reported in this study could lead to new approaches for addressing social discrimination, stigma, and prejudice against individuals with COVID-19 and other illnesses.

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The article, “Belief in just deserts regarding individuals infected with COVID-19 in Japan and its associations with demographic factors and infection-related and socio psychological characteristics: A cross-sectional study” was published in PeerJ at DOI: https://peerj.com/articles/14545/

About Osaka University

Osaka University was founded in 1931 as one of the seven imperial universities of Japan and is now one of Japan's leading comprehensive universities with a broad disciplinary spectrum. This strength is coupled with a singular drive for innovation that extends throughout the scientific process, from fundamental research to the creation of applied technology with positive economic impacts. Its commitment to innovation has been recognized in Japan and around the world, being named Japan's most innovative university in 2015 (Reuters 2015 Top 100) and one of the most innovative institutions in the world in 2017 (Innovative Universities and the Nature Index Innovation 2017). Now, Osaka University is leveraging its role as a Designated National University Corporation selected by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology to contribute to innovation for human welfare, sustainable development of society, and social transformation.

Website: https://resou.osaka-u.ac.jp/en

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JOURNAL

PeerJ

DOI

10.7717/peerj.14545 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Belief in just deserts regarding individuals infected with COVID-19 in Japan and its associations with demographic factors and infection-related and socio-psychological characteristics: A cross-sectional study

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

19-Dec-2022

Male genitalia as an anti-predator defense

Peer-Reviewed Publication

KOBE UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: (A) AN ADULT MALE VISITING A CAYRATIA JAPONICA FLOWER. (B) THE PSEUDO-STINGS (PARAMERAL SPINES; BLUE ARROWS) AND AEDEAGUS (RED ARROW) OF AN ADULT MALE. (C) THE STING (BLUE ARROW) OF AN ADULT FEMALE. view more 

CREDIT: SHINJI SUGIURA

Predation can lead to the evolution of defensive devices in prey animals. Genitalia, which are used for mating between males and females, have rarely been considered to function as an important anti-predator defense. Now, research has documented the first evidence for defensive roles of male genitalia in wasps.

Kobe University ecologists Shinji Sugiura and Misaki Tsujii found that males of the mason wasp Anterhynchium gibbifrons (Hymenoptera: Vespidae: Eumeninae; Fig. 1) use their sharp genital spines as “stings” to counterattack predators and their laboratory experiments suggest that male genitalia play an important role in preventing predators from swallowing male wasps. Their research appears in the 19 December 2022 issue of Current Biology.

Wasps and bees (Insecta: Hymenoptera) use venomous stings to defend themselves and their colonies against attackers. Because they have evolved venomous stings from ovipositors, their males, which lack ovipositors, were believed harmless. However, Misaki Tsujii was accidentally stung by an adult male A. gibbifrons while investigating the life history of the mason wasp species. Surprisingly, the male “sting” caused a pricking pain. The male wasp used a pair of sharp spines in the genitalia (Fig. 1B) to pierce her finger. Although the male behavior is similar to the female stinging behavior (Fig. 1C; see Movie), the genital spines did not appear to emit venom, unlike in the female. Misaki Tsujii also observed that male wasps did not use their genital spines to mate with female wasps under laboratory conditions. Based on her experience and observations, Shinji Sugiura hypothesized that the male genitalia of A. gibbifrons function as an anti-predator defense. To test his hypothesis, Sugiura experimentally provided male wasps to potential predators (a pond frog Pelophylax nigromaculatus and a tree frog Dryophytes japonica) under laboratory conditions. All of the pond frogs (n = 17) attacked and ate the male wasps. Although all of the tree frogs (n = 17) attacked the male wasps, 35.3% of the tree frogs rejected the male wasps (Fig. 2; see Video). The male wasps stung or bit the tree frogs while being attacked. Tree frogs were also provided male wasps from which the genitalia had been removed. All of these tree frogs (n = 17) ate the males. Thus, male wasps can use their genitalia to counterattack predators and prevent the predators from swallowing them.

To compare the anti-predator defense between male and female wasps, Sugiura also provided female wasps to pond and tree frogs. All of the pond frogs (n = 17) attacked and ate the female wasps, while 47.1% of tree frogs (n = 17) attacked the female wasps (Fig. 2); however, 87.5% ultimately rejected them (Fig. 2). Therefore, female wasps have more effective defenses against tree frogs than male wasps do, although the female defense is not effective for pond frogs.

In the experiments, the wasps did not seriously harm the frogs and the same wasps and frogs were not used repeatedly.

Because male genital spines (called “pseudo-stings”) are found in some wasp families (e.g., Mutillidae and Vespidae), their defensive roles will likely be found in many wasp species in which the males have pseudo-stings.

The genitalia of male animals have frequently been studied in terms of conspecific interactions between males and females but rarely in terms of prey–predator interactions. This study highlights the significance of male genitalia as an anti-predator defense and opens a new perspective for understanding the ecological role of male genitalia in animals.

CAPTION

“Control” and “genitalia-removed” indicate the male wasps that were able and unable to sting, respectively.

CREDIT

Shinji Sugiura

Video:
https://youtu.be/hh1LfBSKNFU
Credit: Shinji Sugiura

Journal article:
Sugiura S, Tsujii M (2022) Male wasp genitalia as an anti-predator defense. Current Biology (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2022.11.030)

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JOURNAL

Current Biology

DOI

10.1016/j.cub.2022.11.030 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Male wasp genitalia as an anti-predator defense

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

19-Dec-2022

China's crematoriums 'packed' as Covid cases soar

Agence France-Presse
December 20, 2022

Workers at Beijing crematoriums say they are overwhelmed as China faces a surge in Covid cases that authorities warn could hit its underdeveloped rural hinterland during upcoming public holidays © Noel Celis / AFP

Crematoriums across China are straining to deal with an influx of bodies as the country battles a wave of Covid cases that authorities have said is impossible to track.

Cases are soaring across China, with hospitals struggling and pharmacy shelves stripped bare in the wake of the government's sudden decision to lift years of lockdowns, quarantines and mass testing.

The United States has warned the outbreak is now of concern to the rest of the world, given the potential for further mutations and the size of China's economy.

From the country's northeast to its southwest, crematorium workers told AFP they are struggling to keep up with a surge in deaths.

In Chongqing -- a city of 30 million where authorities this week urged people with mild Covid symptoms to go to work -- one worker told AFP their crematorium had run out of space to keep bodies.

"The number of bodies picked up in recent days is many times more than previously," a staffer who did not give their name said.

"We are very busy, there is no more cold storage space for bodies," they added.

"We are not sure (if it's related to Covid), you need to ask the leaders in charge."

In the southern megapolis of Guangzhou, an employee at one crematorium in Zengcheng district told AFP they were cremating more than 30 bodies a day.

"We have bodies assigned to us from other districts. There's no other option," the employee said.

Another crematorium in the city said they were also "extremely busy".

"It's three or four times busier than in previous years, we are cremating over 40 bodies per day when before it was only a dozen or so," a staffer said.

"The whole of Guangzhou is like this," they added, stressing that it was "hard to say" whether the surge in bodies was linked to Covid.

In the northeastern city of Shenyang, a staff member at a funeral services business said the bodies of the deceased were being left unburied for up to five days because crematoriums are "absolutely packed".

Asked by AFP whether the rise in demand was due to Covid, he said: "What do you think? I've never known a year like this one."

'Potential to mutate'

In the capital Beijing, local authorities on Tuesday reported just five deaths from Covid-19 -- up from two the previous day.

Outside the city's Dongjiao Crematorium, AFP reporters saw more than a dozen vehicles waiting to enter, most of them hearses or funerary coaches.

Delays were obvious, with a driver towards the front of the queue telling AFP he had already waited several hours.

It was not immediately clear whether an increase in Covid deaths was causing the backlog, and crematorium staff declined to answer questions.

The end to mandatory testing has made the toll of China's Covid surge difficult to track, with authorities last week admitting it is now "impossible" to tally how many have fallen sick.

Beijing health officials Tuesday said that only those who had directly died of respiratory failure caused by the virus would be counted under Covid death statistics.

"At present after being infected with the Omicron variant, the main cause of death remains underlying diseases," Wang Guiqiang of Peking University First Hospital told a press conference of the National Health Commission (NHC).

"Old people have other underlying conditions, only a very small number die directly of respiratory failure caused by infection with Covid," they added.

"We are not avoiding the dangers of Covid. At the same time we need to assess Covid's dangers in a scientific manner."

The US State Department said Monday the surge was now a matter of international concern.

"We know that any time the virus is spreading, that it is in the wild, that it has the potential to mutate and to pose a threat to people everywhere," State Department spokesman Ned Price said.

"The toll of the virus is of concern to the rest of the world given the size of China's GDP, given the size of China's economy," he added.


© 2022 AFP

"Wave Of Fatalities" Rippling Through China, Not In Official Data, Reports Say

People from Hebei in the north to Guangdong in the south have flocked to China's Twitter-style Weibo platform to post about longer-than-normal queues at funeral homes.

Bloomberg December 20, 2022 

The low official death tally runs counter to what's been seen across the world

China appears to be seeing an increase in Covid deaths across a swath of the country that aren't being reported in government figures, according to social media posts, adding to speculation that officials are masking the full impact of their abrupt shift away from Covid Zero.

People from Hebei in the north to Guangdong in the south have flocked to China's Twitter-style Weibo platform to post about longer-than-normal queues at funeral homes, and crematoriums handling a growing number of bodies. The reports indicate the wave of fatalities that, until now, has been centered in the capital of Beijing - which has officially had seven deaths in recent days despite an explosion in infections - is quietly rippling through less prominent parts of the country.

A man who said he worked at a crematorium in Hebei wrote in a Weibo post, which has since been deleted, that his facility is performing as many as 22 cremations a day from about four-to-five before December. Screenshots of the original post, which can't be verified by Bloomberg News, continue to circulate across Chinese social media. The poster didn't respond to a request for comment.

A screenshot allegedly showing the rising number of obituaries published by a university to commemorate staff who have recently died has also been widely shared. A Weibo poster in Guangdong said the crematorium he went to had staff working overtime to deal with a spate of deaths among the elderly, while a man in Henan said a funeral parlor he attended was so overwhelmed that bodies were being put in corridors.

In Chongqing, which hasn't officially declared a Covid death since late-November, a woman said her grandfather died over the weekend and she faced a long wait for a death certificate. How China can have so few fatalities - less than 20 since the first tentative steps toward easing Covid controls in late-November - and why they're concentrated in Beijing have also become frequently asked questions across social media platforms.

The skepticism has a solid foundation. The low official death tally runs counter to what's been seen across the world, and even in places like Shanghai and Hong Kong, where omicron's arrival sparked a surge in infections followed swiftly by a wave of fatalities.

Smoke rises from a crematorium at Dongjiao Funeral Parlor, reportedly designated to handle Covid fatalities, in Beijing, on Dec. 19.

But it's been particularly notable given China spent little time putting in place mitigation measures to prepare for this month's dismantling of Covid Zero: the population, especially the elderly, are under-vaccinated, and officials have only recently vowed to add more hospital beds.

The real number of deaths may also have been masked by a change in how to define a Covid fatality. Caixin reported that China had narrowed the guidelines, issuing new guidance this month that notes that some patients who were Covid-positive may have died from underlying illness, and medical facilities have 24 hours to ascertain a person's cause of death. Previously, anyone who died while Covid-positive was considered a Covid death.

Fatalities are just one data point that's evoked suspicion, with the country also abandoning efforts to count all infections after scrapping frequent PCR testing for residents.

It's in China's interest to downplay the severity of the situation. Its vast propaganda apparatus has shifted from trumpeting President Xi Jinping's flagship Covid Zero approach and upbraiding other nations who had shifted to living with the virus, to downplaying its risks and likening Covid to a cold.

Post a commentChina has maintained a tight grip on information throughout the pandemic, from the earliest days in Wuhan to sporadic updates on vaccination progress and closely controlled press conferences. That makes the snapshots on social media an important way to gauge the reality of the country's worst ever Covid outbreak.

Insect Farms are Scaling Up—and Crossing the Atlantic—in a Play for Sustainable Protein


Black soldier flies convert food waste into feed for pets, aquaculture, and livestock. But as agribusiness giants partner with European companies, concerns about high energy use hover over the fast-developing insect production industry.


BY LYNN FANTOM
DECEMBER 20, 2022

A black soldier fly. (Photo courtesy of Protix)

LONG READ

When they’re raised in indoor farms, black soldier flies (BSF) will only mate with the lights on. Each female lays 500 eggs and, after they hatch, the larvae also have a bit of a Goldilocks complex, preferring just the right levels of warmth and humidity.

But when it comes to their diet, the little maggots aren’t fussy. They crunch through any and all food waste, consuming twice their body mass daily. When they’re satiated, they crawl up the sides of their rearing bins toward a high, clean place, a behavior insect researchers enthusiastically refer to as “self-harvesting.”

What insect farmers collect is valuable biomass that contains as much as 40 percent protein and 30 percent fat. And all in about two weeks.

Now, some leading European insect-farming companies are betting on growing the opportunity to turn this biomass into feed for fish, livestock, and pets by expanding to the U.S. These companies run high-tech, commercial-scale operations in France and the Netherlands, and they’re coming to America amid a swarm of multi-year deals and big investments, such as the $250 million that the Paris-headquartered InnovaFeed raised in September.

The magnet drawing them across the Atlantic is not a market of 335 million people, though. It’s America’s waste. Instead of smoldering in landfills, the byproducts of the vast U.S. agricultural system can be given a second life—as feed for insects.

“We are interested in accessing the feedstock, rather than the market,” the newly announced general manager of Innovafeed’s U.S. venture Maye Walraven said on a recent phone call while in a cab to O’Hare Airport on her way back to Paris. InnovaFeed is on track to break ground in Decatur, Illinois, in January—just “over the fence” from the world’s largest corn processing complex, owned by Archer Daniels Midland (ADM).

“We risk creating an industry that replaces one environmental problem with another, as occurred with biofuel,” where the promise of plant-based fuel has been thwarted by the realities of using land, water, and fertilizer.

But while some see the black soldier fly as a more sustainable ingredient for aquaculture and animal feed—compared to soy and fishmeal—concerns about high energy use continue to hover over the fast-developing insect production industry.

“Are we going to use fossil fuels for heating and cooling the facilities where insects are grown? What about transportation?” Åsa Berggren asked in an interview with the Thomson Reuters Foundation following a 2019 article in Trends in Ecology & Evolution that fixed a spotlight on unanswered questions about the right species to grow, feed options, use of insect waste, and more.

A professor of ecology at the Swedish University of Agricultural Science, Berggren and her colleagues called for more research and an “empirical measure of ecological impact and sustainability of production,” saying they were “critical” for the emerging industry.

“Otherwise we risk creating an industry that replaces one environmental problem with another, as occurred with biofuel,” where the promise of plant-based fuel has been thwarted by the realities of using land, water, and fertilizer, she added.

What’s happening now, especially as E.U. insect companies expand to the U.S., begins to answer some of Berggren’s clarion questions.
InnovaFeed and ADM: The Deal

ADM and InnovaFeed may seem like strange partners, but each has something the other wants. For the French biotech company, it’s a “very deep” supply of competitively priced feedstock, Walraven said. For the food processing and commodities trading giant, it’s the opportunity to burnish its image with new sustainability credentials and bolster its relationship with city and state officials by bringing in a new employer.

The two firms plan to “collaborate on the construction and operation of the world’s largest insect production site.” InnovaFeed will own and operate the facility, which will be co-located with ADM’s corn processing plant. ADM will supply corn byproducts to feed the insects, as well as waste heat, water recycling, and other utilities services, according to ADM spokesperson Jackie Anderson. Some 60 percent of the new plant’s energy requirement will be supplied by ADM’s waste energy, Walraven said.

An overhead view of the facility where InnovaFeed and ADM will colocate production of insect protein. (Photo courtesy of InnovaFeed)

The factory is scheduled to open in late 2024 and, when it’s running at full capacity, it will produce an annual volume of 60,000 metric tons of protein meal (a brown powder that looks like cocoa), 20,000 metric tons of oil (a source of essential fatty acids and energy), and 400,000 metric tons of fertilizer.

In a second deal, announced last February, InnovaFeed agreed to supply insect protein to ADM’s pet food division. But ADM will not claim all of the Decatur plant’s output.

InnovaFeed is also working with Cargill, and the two companies announced in June that they would extend their existing partnership from three years to 10 to supply insect-based feed for aquaculture, as well as for chicks and piglets. Hello Nature, an organic fertilizer producer operating in 80 countries, uses InnovaFeed’s insect frasse (excrement) fertilizer.

As all of this happens, InnovaFeed’s first commercial-scale factory in northern France, which opened in 2020, continues to pump out black soldier fly products. Located next to a starch plant that supplies its byproducts through a pipeline, it also operates under what Walraven referred to as the “symbiosis model” and yields 15,000 tons of protein annually.
The Circular Economy at Work


Like Rumpelstiltskin spinning straw into gold, the black soldier fly is the bioconverter at the beginning of the circle that yields all of this

Its frenetic eating could be part of a solution to daunting global challenges: feeding a growing world population, countering overfishing of wild stocks for fishmeal, and managing waste.

Much of the appeal of insect farming, in fact, is that the wastes of one process become the resources for another. And in the process of converting a low-value input to a high-value output, insect farms have the potential to use less land and water and emit fewer greenhouse gases than the production of the vast quantity of soy that goes into animal feed. It also means that consumers don’t have to grapple directly with the stigma of eating organisms that eat waste themselves.

“We care a lot about the impact our industry can have. The more we can replace other sources of protein and have a better environmental impact, the happier we will be,” Walraven said.
Scrutinizing Environmental Impacts

When Berggren and her Swedish research colleagues wrote their article in 2019, life cycle assessments (LCA) had only just begun to be applied to insect rearing systems. Now many such studies have been conducted to provide sustainability diagnostics by examining every stage of the insect production chain. Beyond capturing the environmental footprint, the LCAs compare findings regarding global warming potential and land and water use directly to benchmarks.

But there are many challenges. Even when an LCA isolates a single species, like the black soldier fly (mealworms, house flies, and house crickets have also been assessed), the complexity of the insect-rearing process and differences in products manufactured have yielded “uncertainties and variabilities” among studies, according to a 2022 paper by an Italian research team that examined more than 20 LCAs conducted during the last decade.

“Despite the numerous advantages of BSF larvae, there are several critical environmental aspects, particularly its global warming potential, that need to be considered before large-scale adoption,” the authors of the 2022 paper continued, echoing Berggren. They noted that CO2 emissions ranged from 1 to 4 kilograms of CO2 equivalent (CO2e) for every kilogram of BSF dry matter produced.

“Despite the numerous advantages of BSF larvae, there are several critical environmental aspects, particularly its global warming potential, that need to be considered before large-scale adoption.”

“Energy use is one of the major environmental concerns,” wrote the paper’s authors. That’s because heat, humidity, and other elements of a facility’s climate must be carefully controlled for optimal production and animal welfare. Lighting, production of feedstock, and processing insects into the meal and oil products also consume energy.

But when companies transitioned to alternative renewable sources, according to this recent paper, energy use improved significantly: switching to solar photovoltaic panels reduced their energy impacts by 25 to 46 percent.

When Protix, a Netherlands-based company that farms black soldier flies, built its new industrial-scale, technology-intensive plant that opened in 2019, it not only installed solar panels but also benefited from the Dutch government’s commitment to wind power. “In some cases, we cut utilities by some 70 percent,” said Eric Schmitt, research and development director at Protix.

Schmitt knows the energy requirements of the different systems intimately. He recently coordinated the development of an LCA with the German Institute of Food Technologies based on Protix’s operations at its plant in Bergen op Zoom.

The study found that the CO2 footprint of the Protix insect meal (at 1.1 kilogram CO2e) was 85 percent lower that of the soy protein concentrate (at 7.5 kilogram CO2e) commonly used in livestock and fish feed. Insect meal production also required much less water: 64 percent less than what was needed for the soy product.

These findings, along with some others, were announced in November and Schmitt says a full academic paper will soon follow.

“We definitely use energy, but it’s much less now than at the pilot plant,” he added. “I think it’s still more than we would like, but there are clear ways it’s coming down. We see opportunities for the next plant.”

Inside an Insect Farm

Protix, founded in 2009, has also been on scouting missions to expand internationally since it raised over $57 million in equity from impact investors last February. After a recent trip to the U.S., CEO Kees Aarts said during a Zoom meeting, “We see a big opportunity in the U.S. so it’s likely that we’re going to be there quite soon.”

Protix’s current (and only) facility in the Netherlands cost over $50 million to build. Within its 15,000 square feet, it is staffed by more robots than people. A few technicians are posted at central consoles who, among other things, ensure the very clean interior of the vertical farm feels more like the tropics (30°C/86°F) than the south of the Netherlands.

What is most striking, though, are thousands of columns of green crates, each more than 12 feet high and some 50 feet deep. Here, the black soldier fly larvae eat and grow under the watchful eye of image sensors and computers that count their number and size and collect data to identify which have the best hereditary characteristics.

Inside the Protix insect-protein vertical farm. (Photo courtesy of Protix)

All in all, the larvae consume more than 70,000 tons of food waste annually. Those feed ingredients are delivered daily by truck and turned into a proprietary puree in giant mixers.

“The diet formulation has been getting better, and we’re getting more sustainability from that,” said Schmitt, noting a decrease from roughly 5 to 3.7 units of food for every 1 unit of output.

The company said it has also invested in a genetics program to breed the most desirable traits. In two years, that has resulted in 39 percent heavier larvae, 32 percent more protein harvested per crate, and 21 percent more fat harvested per crate, according to a paper published in Frontiers in Genetics.

“Now we’re looking into how much energy [and] feed they use per kilogram,” added Schmitt. “I think genetics in general is going to cut the consumption of inputs and, in the long run, may be more significant than the technology. We’ll see.”

From Pet Food to Aquafeed

Up to this point, most of Protix’s output has been sold to produce pet food, but that is also changing.

In September, for example, the company unveiled a new partnership to produce feed for European land-based shrimp that replaces marine ingredients with insect protein. “Why are we feeding fish to fish if we can do it more sustainably?” Kees Aarts of Protix has said. “Insects are natural and make more sense.”

Rabobank, the Dutch bank that focuses on the global food and agriculture sector, estimates the insect protein market will increase from 120,000 metric tons in 2020 to half a million by 2030. The industry group International Platform of Insects for Food and Feed (IPIFF) cites an even higher “aspirational” target of 1 million tons.

Currently, over half of the insect protein that is produced is used as an ingredient in pet food, but that percentage is expected to decline during this decade as more insects go to feed farmed fish, industry watchers say.

“Why are we feeding fish to fish if we can do it more sustainably?”

Still, pet food is where InnovaFeed and ADM are starting. “Pet solutions is a strategic growth opportunity for ADM, with $100 billion in demand growing 4.5 percent a year,” Jorge Martinez, president, pet solutions for ADM, said in a press release. Consumers want pet food that mirrors what they look for in their own foods, including alternative proteins, traceability, and responsible sourcing.

And, from an environmental standpoint, it’s a good place to start because dogs and cats account for 25 to 30 percent of the impact of meat consumption in the U.S., according to a UCLA study.

When Protix director of product development Aman Paul spoke at an event called Petfood Forum Europe earlier this year, he also emphasized the health benefits of fat from the black soldier fly. For dogs and cats, he said, it provides high digestibility, strong antimicrobial activity, and brain health improvement.

As insect producers expand from pet food to aquaculture feed, they’re also finding a market that is 50 percent larger and growing. Globally, people are consuming more fish than ever before, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, and aquaculture will fill the gap between what wild fishers catch and what people want (and need) for protein.

To do that, though, aquaculture must find alternatives, such as insects, to feed its farmed fish. Over the last 20 years, it has lowered the fish-in-fish-out ratio for all fed species, increasingly relying on terrestrial ingredients. But it’s also faced intense pressure to source soy responsibly.

So, though insect protein currently costs more, the aquaculture industry is on the hunt for sustainable suppliers who can produce enough to deliver reliably.

Will U.S.-Based Insect Farmers Contribute?

The ascent of U.S. insect start-ups has zigzagged, though some companies took shape as early as Protix.

EnviroFlight, for example, was founded in 2009 in Ohio and opened its first commercial production center in Kentucky in 2019 with a capacity of 900 metric tons of black soldier fly protein meal. That will increase to 3,000 next year, according to Carrie Kuball, head of sales and marketing. Still, its volume will be dwarfed by InnovaFeed’s plans for 60,000 metric tons.

There has been something of a Gold Rush mentality in insect production, not confined to Americans. And, as in all Gold Rushes, the money is flying and the science can be murky.

Another U.S company, Chapul, launched when its founder appeared on Shark Tank and attracted an investment from Mark Cuban for the first U.S. cricket protein bar, a market the founder exited in 2019. This year, with a $2.5 million investment, the company has partnered with a construction/engineering firm and now focuses on building insect farms for others. One of their services is to customize co-located facilities based on different waste streams, signaling there will be others that mimic the InnovaFeed-ADM model.

French mealworm producer Ÿnsect is already following in their tracks. In early December, it announced that it would “explore potential synergies” with flour milling company Ardent Mills, a joint venture among ConAgra Foods, Cargill, and the farmer- and rancher-owned agribusiness CHS. Ÿnsect plans to construct its first large-scale farm in the U.S. next to one of Ardent Mills’ midwestern sites by the end of 2023, according to Reuters.

Today’s food system is complex.

There has been something of a Gold Rush mentality in insect production, not confined to Americans. And, as in all Gold Rushes, the money is flying and the science can be murky. (The researchers themselves have called for efforts to “harmonize” data.)

“Lots of people get into the business because of the financial potential in it,” said Asa Berggren during a recent Zoom call. “Like flies to a piece of sugar.” But there have also been “heaps of initiatives” and substantial research moving the industry in positive directions.

And that includes what’s happening at some U.S. start-ups. Last summer, Beta Hatch, which was founded in 2015 by an entomologist, opened a 50,000-square-foot mealworm production facility in Washington state. Designed in collaboration with another construction and energy services firm, it derives 100 percent of its electricity from renewable sources.

What Will It Take to Succeed?

Sonny Ramaswamy, an entomologist and agricultural scientist who headed the USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture for six years under President Obama, calls the co-location model that is emerging as an important prototype a “win-win.”

“The bottom line is insect producers must have a reliable stream of the byproduct they can raise their insects on, and then they can scale and be a reliable supply,” he added.

To that end, the U.S. has a great deal to offer. “It’s a large economy. There’s a lot of waste coming from all those production and manufacturing conversion processes,” added Protix’s Aarts. “If agro-processors would become more circular, it would be very imaginable that a country like the U.S. could improve productivity in this sector by 15, 20 percent.”

And that is to say nothing of the environmental benefits that would accrue by keeping the peels, seeds, husks, hulls, stems, and trimmings from food processing out of landfills. After all, these leftovers are part of the food loss and waste that is the second-highest cause of greenhouse gas emission, according to the FAO.

What’s more, scientists see potential medical value in the black soldier fly’s “supernormal capacity” to survive in decaying waste by defending itself against pathogen invasion with antimicrobial peptides (AMPs). They are studying how these AMPs might act as substitutes for antibiotics in livestock farming—and for humans.

“My guess is this area will develop a lot because this could be a way to combat the problem of antibiotic drug resistance,” said Berggren. “We need a long-term study, but this shows a lot of promise.”

And while there is no one model for helping the insect farming industry become more sustainable, the focus on insects as a novel source of protein for the food industry clearly isn’t going away anytime soon. As Berggren sees it, all this interest “has increased the understanding of insects themselves and the value of the services they provide, beyond pollination.”



Lynn Fantom is a freelance reporter based in New York City and downeast Maine. 

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