Cockroach Farms Do Big Business for Food and Pharmaceuticals

The secret ingredient in Chinese traditional medicine? Ground-up cockroach. Many farmers in China are turning to one of the world's most reviled bugs to make big bucks. They're cheap to feed (they live on rotting vegetables), easy to kill (dunk them in boiling water) and easy to store (dry them in the sun). Farmers are making a healthy profit selling the roaches to researchers studying whether the pulverized insects can be used to cure baldness, AIDS and cancer. They also wind up as fish food and even, sometimes, as deep-fried snacks for humans.

Read more about roach ranching at the LA Times.