'Like a scene from a horror movie': Life inside the world's largest cockroach factory

The Periplaneta Americana cockroaches can't fly and must be kept in the warm environment of the factory. Photo / Getty Images

Working for the world's largest cockroach farm, the Good Doctor Pharmaceutical Group in Xichang City, China, is not for the faint hearted.

Workers wearing lab coats spend their days with cockroaches climbing up their arms and body, as a reporter found when she was invited in.

The Sydney Morning Herald journalist said the factory was "like a scene from a horror movie", which sounds exactly like you'd expect from a giant breeding ground for cockroaches.

Breeding manager Ying Xiong pulls out a cardboard square from a row of racks, with bare hands, and drops it into a bowl on the ground. That's when thousands of cockroaches stream out and begin climbing her body, under her lab coat, all over her hair.

"At the beginning I was scared, but I got used to it," she told the reporter.

"It is not as horrible as people imagine."

The factory breeds the Periplaneta Americana, or American cockroach. In one factory corridor alone there are 3.6 billion cockroaches stacked in racks in different rooms.

The factory was mostly a secret up until a few days ago when a Hong Kong newspaper found a research paper and reported that the lab was using artificial intelligence (AI) to manage the giant cockroach colony.

To get some good PR and end some myths propagated by social media since the news erupted, the president of the company invited media into the factory. The idea was to show that cockroach breeding wasn't so bad. But isn't it?

The only government-certified cockroach lab in the world has indeed developed an AI system but it won't be in place until next year, when a new lab is built.

That's when cockroach output is expected to triple (and remember it's already in the billions in that one factory).

So how do you breed cockroaches? First the larvae are reared on milk powder. They egg in a breeding room and, when they reach maturity, they are moved to the main lab building, into dark warm rooms, where they continue to grow on a diet of grains and plants.

When the time comes, after six or eight months, the cockroaches are attracted with heat to a different part of the room and super heated to death. They are washed and crushed, ready to be sent to the extraction lab.

The outside of the factory. Photo / Supplied

It all must obey strict hygiene standards as the cockroaches are for human consumption.

(Yes, you read that right.)

To prevent any cockroaches escaping, the building is surrounded by a 1m moat of water, full of fish. The fish eat any cockroach that dares escape.

The company supplies its cockroach medicine to thousands of Chinese hospitals and pharmacies.

The medicine is used in the treatment of diabetic ulcers and severe skin wounds. The packaging makes no mention of cockroach in the ingredients list.

The company says it doesn't purposefully hide that the products are made with cockroaches.

"We have to list the Chinese medicinal name on the package, so that's what we list," Research and development chief Ma Xiuying says.

The company firmly believes in the healing powers of cockroaches. The president, Fu Neng Geng, eats 10 a day.