Author: Dato' Dr Anuar

Occasionally small rats entered our kitchen to sniff out for leftover foods. If they are not lucky, they are caught by my cats, Salina  Boy or Charlie. Instead of being considered a pest, a species of rat, the African giant pouched rat, is being trained to detect a disease that is devastating livestock and threatening the livelihoods of farmers in the world’s poorest countries, as quoted by the Times of London on January 29^th, 2021.

Brucellosis is a highly contagious bacterial infection that causes infertility and low milk yields in cows, sheep, goats and pigs. Detection is hard and expensive.

Glasgow University is working with researchers at Sokoine University in Tanzania on using sniffer rats to tackle the problem. The African giant pouched rats, which can grow to 91 cm in length, have already been trained to detect landmines and tuberculosis.

Dan Haydon, director of the institute of biodiversity, animal health and comparative medicine at Glasgow University, said that the idea developed after he discovered how sniffer dogs were being used to detect brucellosis in Yellowstone National Park, in the United States, where there is a brucella problem with elk, bison and cattle. “Professor Rudovick Kazwala, who is lead researcher at Sokoine, said, ‘Aha, well, we already have this facility where rats are being specially trained to sniff landmines and tuberculosis’”, Professor Haydon said.“So, we figured if they can smell landmines and smell TB then surely we can get them to smell brucellosis. It turns out you can.”

The scientists received a grant to conduct the research through the British Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. Testing has delivered encouraging results so far.

The African giant pouched rat is used rather than the standard lab rat because they are easier to source in sub-Saharan Africa and live longer.

It takes nine months and costs about £5,000 to train a rat, which can then speed through 100 samples in 20 minutes.

Magawa, the most famous African pouched rat

Magawa has been awarded a prestigious gold medal for his work deteting land mine, according to the website, www.bbc.com on September 24^th, 2020. Magawa has sniffed out 39 landmines and 28 unexploded munitions in his career. The UK veterinary charity PDSA has presented him with its Gold Medal for “life -saving devotion to duty, in the location and clearance of deadly landmines in Cambodia”.

PDSA’s Gold Medal is inscribed with the words “For animal gallantry or devotion to duty”. Of the 30 animals recipients of the award,  Magawa is the first rat. The seven-year-old Magawa was trained by the Belgium-registered charity Apopo (www.apopo.org),  which is based in Tanzania and has been raising the animals,-known as HeroRats-to detect landmines and tuberculosis since 1990s. The animals are certified after a year of training.  

According to Apopo, Magawa was born and raised in  Tanzania-weighs 1.2 kg and is 70 cm long. While that is far larger than many other socies, Magawa is still small enough and light enough that he does not trigger mines if he walks over them.

The rats are trained to detect a chemical compound  within the explosives,  meaning they ignore scrap metal and can search for mines more quickly. Once they find an explosive, they scratch the top to alert their human co-workers.

Magawa is capable of searching a field the size of a  tennis court in just 20 minutes-something Apopo says would take a person with a metal detector between one and four days. Magawa works for just an hour a day in the mornings and is nearing retirement age, but PDSA director, Jan McLoughlin, said his work with Apopo was “truly unique and outstanding”. “Magawa’s work directly saves and changes the lives of men, women and children who are impacted by these landmines, says PDSA. “Every discovery he makes reduces the risk of injury or death for local Cambodians.”

The training of African giant pouched rat

African giant pouched rats can live between 6 to 8 years. This long lifespan for  a rat makes training a worthwhile  investment. They are food motivated and willing to work with just about any handler for a proper reward.  

From now on, I will tell my cats not to kill the rats around our house as their species are saving human lives in countries which have the problem of landmines and  unexploded munitions.      

When I was small, living in a village with many rivers and natural ponds, a favourite hobby was fishing for fresh water fish. We would find larvae of beetles in fallen sago palms and used it as a fish bait. In remote parts of Sarawak in East Malaysia, locals eat these live larvae as delicacies as they are considered nutritious and as aphrodisiacs. Fallen sago palms are favourite places to find the  larvae.

The larvae of beetles is no longer only for locals in remote regions of Asia. It was reported in the Guardian, dated January 13^th, 2021, these larvae could soon be mass produced across Europe after the insect became the first to be found safe for human consumption by the European Union (EU) Food Safety Agency. The larvae of the beetle Tenebrio molitor could be eaten in powder form as part of a recipe or as crunchy smacks.  

The conclusion of scientists at the EU Food Safety Agency, following application by the French insect-for-food production company, Agronutris, is expected to lead to EU-wide approval within months of yellow mealworm as a product fit for supermarket shelves and kitchen pantries across the continent.

Mealworms are the larval stage of the beetle, Tenebrio molitor, a species of darkling beetle. Like all holometabolic insects, they go through four life stages: eggs, larvae, pupa, and adult. Larvae typically measures about 2,5 cm or more, whereas adults are generally between 1.25 and 1.8 cm in length.

Interesting Facts

According to Wikipedia.org, the mealworm beetle breeds prolifically. Mating is a three-step process: the male chasing the female, mounting her and inserting his aedeagus, and injecting a sperm packet. Within a few days the female burrows into soft ground and lays eggs. Over a lifespan, a female, on average, lay about 500 eggs.

After four to 19 days the eggs hatch. Many predators  target the eggs, including reptiles. During the larval stage, the mealworm feeds on vegetation and dead insects  and molts between each larval stage., or instar (9 to 20 instar). After the final molt it becomes a pupa. The new pupa is whitish, and it turns brown over time. After 3 to 30 days, depending on environmental conditions such as temperature, it emerges as an adult beetle.

Mealworms have historically been consumed in many Asian countries, particularly in Southeast Asia. They are commonly  found in food markets, and sold as street food alongside other edible insects. Baked or fried mealworms have been marketed as a healthy snack food in recent history, though the consumption of mealworms goes back centuries. They may be easily reared on fresh oats, wheat  bran, with slices of potato, carrot, or apple as a moisture source. The small amount of space required to raise mealworms has made them popular in many parts of Southeast Asia.

The insect’s main components are protein, fat and fibre, offering a potentially sustainable and low carbon-emission source of food for the future. When dried, larvae is said to taste a lot like peanuts.

Insects-for-food Industry

The leading players in the insects-as-food industry have been held-back by a lack of EU-wide approval. The products are prohibited from sale in France, Germany, Italy and Spain, among other European countries. Without approval from the Food Safety Agency, they faced being banned  elsewhere on the continent too. The UK, Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark and Finland, have previously take a permissive approach to an EU law that requires food not eaten before 1997 to obtain novel food authorisation from Brussels. British, Dutch, Belgian and Finnish regulators had decided the EU directive did not pertain to animals products used for food. But in 2018 a new EU law sought to bring some clarity. It stipulated that insect-based dishes would require novel food authorisation, putting the nascent insect-food industry on a weak footing.

The products have remained available in those countries as a result of a transition period to allow companies already producing food from insects to operate until they receive the final judgement.   

Insect-based food has long been seen as a part of the solution to cutting the emission of greenhouse gases in food production. Guardian quoted Mario Mazzocchi, professor at the University of Bologna: “ There are clean environmental and economic benefits if you substitute traditional sources of proteins with those that require less feed, produce less waste and result in fewer greenhouse gas  emission. Lower costs and prices could enhance food security and new demand will open economic opportunities too, but these could also affect existing sectors.”   

Giovanai Sogari, a social and consumer researcher at the University of Parma, said the squearmishness of many consumers towards insect-originated food product may eventually fall away. “There are cognitive reasons derived from our social and cultural experiences-the so-called ‘yuck factor’ – that make the thought of eating insects repellent to many Europeans,” he said. “With time and exposure, such attitudes can change.”

Insect-As- Food Companies

Our research shows there are a number of insect-as-food companies based in Europe and in other countries. They include:

A long list of insect-as-food companies and entrepreneurs is found on www.bugburger.se. Thailand has the most established insect-as-food industry. It covers insect farms, insect processing  companies, and substantial market of insect-eating consumers. In my country Malaysia, the insect-as-food industry has a small potential due to a large population of Muslims in the country. Insects are considered as non-permissible foods.