Producing Insects for Food Would produce Less GHG than Pork or Chicken Do Now.

If you really want to lower your carbon footprint, why not eat meal worms or cockroach? Some helpful Dutch entomolgists people did the math for us.  

 That would be the day!   Most of  us resist change in eating habits, Arlington County forbids backyard chickens, let alone pigs or cockroaches.   

Eating whitetail deer--which are scourges of our gardens and fields-- would be more to the point.  The "Locavore Hunter" in the DC area  trains suburbanites to kill and butcher their own deer, and butts up against the Bambi syndrome everyday. (at: http://rule-303.blogspot.com/)

They studied in detail these inset species: 

• Fifth larval stage mealworms Tenebrio molitor L. (Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae)

• Fifth and sixth nymphal stage house crickets Acheta domesticus (L.) (Orthoptera: Gryllidae), 

• Third and fourth stage nymphs of migratory locusts Locusta migratoria (L.) (Orthoptera: Acrididae), 

• Third larval stage sun beetles Pachnoda marginata Drury (Coleoptera; Scarabaeidae) and 

• A mix of all stages of the Argentinean cockroach Blaptica dubia (Serville) (Dictyoptera: Blaberidae). They point out ahat  "Currently, T. molitor, A. domesticus and L. migratoria are considered edible, while P. marginata and B. dubia are not. The latter two species were included since they are a potential source of animal protein, for instance by means of protein extraction. These two species can be bred in large numbers with little time investment and are able to utilise a wide range of substrates as feed."

It's in An Exploration on Greenhouse Gas and Ammonia Production by Insect Species Suitable for Animal or Human Consumption by Dennis G. A. B. Oonincx^1*, Joost van Itterbeeck¹, Marcel J. W. Heetkamp², Henry van den Brand², Joop J. A. van Loon¹, Arnold van Huis¹  in the journal PLos ONE  [http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0014445