Woah… ho… Gotta love that clickbait title. I’ll cut to the chase though- more research is needed before you can get roach milk on the shelf. From the article:
“But today we have no evidence that it is actually safe for human consumption.”
“Plus roaches aren’t the easiest creatures to milk.”
I really like the smell of goat cheese lol. It’s a strong smell for sure, and it does have that grassy, musky funk to it.
Then again, I enjoy the smell of goats (though not goat poo). Again, it’s a potent smell, funky and animal.
But roaches smelled bad to my nose in a way that other bugs don’t. Back in the day, I kept aquariums, fished a lot, and ended up taking in some strange pets. So I was farming earthworms, crickets, meal worms, and brine shrimp. All of them have a distinct smell. But I could be out on the porch where the bugs were, and it was pleasant enough. Not so with the roaches. I was thinking about farming them for other people’s pets, but just couldn’t handle the odor (or the idea of them getting loose tbh).
I guess it’s one of those things where we’re all wired a tiny bit existent different when it comes to good/bad perceptions
I’ve lived in roach infested regions and encountered many. But never smelled them. Are you holding them up to your nose? I’m not sure I ever got closer than ~50cm from one. I wonder if you have an extra sensitive olfactory sense.
In any case, the odor could be a defense mechanism perhaps sucreted and maybe not in the milk. The smell of fish is off putting to me but I can eat a fresh prepared white fish because the odor of the meat is fine.
Roach farming, like any insect farming, keeps the bugs in containers. That keeps the smell concentrated.
I do have a fairly acute sense of smell, but at the time I was looking into roach farming, I was still smoking, so my nose was much weaker. The guy that had the “farm” could smell it though, and so could his wife and kids, which is one of the reasons why the farm was in an outbuilding of its own.
There’s kind of a “critical mass” with insect smells. Like ants, they have a strong odor if you get a few hundred together in one place, but you won’t notice it until then. Mealworms, you can smell when there’s a few dozen in a container, crickets don’t even need that many if they’re in a container for a while. Worms, like red wigglers, their smell is mostly covered up by being in soil, but if you’re switching containers for some reason, you get a double handful or so, and it starts to be detectable (it’s a kind of meaty smell, with a bit of petrichor like note).
In containers, there’s also the waste that contributes to the overall smell, though you should really be cleaning often enough it’s minor.
Afaik, the scent roaches have is a combination of pheromones and a little bit of that chitin smell that all insects have. It’s there even with perfectly clean bedding in a new container for transport, though definitely milder.
Up close, like in a container for sale, it’s barely noticeable to my nose. Faint enough that I kinda thought it might just be my imagination or some carryover. But I could still smell it later on. Never held an individual roach close to my nose, though.