The Story of the Fly

And how it could save the world

Jason Drew

• Publisher: Harriman House
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780857198686
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Agribusiness
• Index: Business

The Story of the Fly explores how a humble insect, with its fascinating history and manifold talents, holds the answer to profitably solving some of the most significant environmental challenges we face today.This book offers unique insight into an extraordinary insect that most of us take for granted. It presents real-world examples of how businesses are learning from, working with, and industrialising the fly – from space exploration to waste recycling.Jason Drew has extensively written and spoken about the notion of environmental capitalism. Alongside his team of scientists, engineers, and enthusiastic business minds, Jason has spent over a decade developing the science, technology and resulting businesses explored in this book.What started as a wild idea in a tractor shed on his farm in South Africa has since grown into a multinational world-leading insect technology company with staff in 11 countries. Most recently, AgriProtein was named one of Time magazine's 50 Genius Companies – businesses that are working to reinvent the future. The Story of the Fly is an insightful, easy-to-read book containing a positive message about how environmentalism and business can work together to provide long-term, commercially viable and environmentally beneficial solutions. It aims is to inspire business leaders to act now and harness the power of nature to bring about a more sustainable and profitable future.Let's get busy repairing the future.

Part 1: Introducing the fly

Chapter 1: The fly as a foe

We have been carrying fly swatters for much of recorded human history. And while science has been applied to killing flies in ever more inventive ways, they continue to irritate humans – and probably always will.

Arguably the most famous fly swat in history happened in June 2009, during a live television interview with CNBC. Then US President Barack Obama lashed out at and brought down a troublesome housefly, and then exclaimed: “That was pretty impressive, wasn’t it? I got the sucker.”

As the camera swung to the fly on the floor, the incident created a buzz around the world. The association People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) was one of the first to react:

“Well, I guess it can’t be said that President Obama wouldn’t hurt a fly,” blogged PETA representative Alisa Mullins. “In a nutshell, our position is this: he isn’t the Buddha, he’s a human being, and human beings have a long way to go before they think before they act.”

Mullins went on to say that PETA was sending a “humane bug catcher” to Obama, “for future insect incidents”. It’s called the Katcha Bug, comprising a plastic dome with a handle and a shutter mechanism. Simply place the dome over a fly on a flat surface, then twist the handle to drop the shutter and trap the fly inside, unharmed and ready to be released out of the White House back door.

Whether or not the former President graduated from the SWAT team to Katcha Bug is still unknown. What is known, however, is that it wouldn’t have made much of a difference either way. Humans have been swatting at flies for all of recorded history. Flies, in turn, have been bugging humans for just as long – if not longer. The fourth of the Bible’s ten plagues was a swarm of flies, and ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics frequently show pharaohs followed closely by court officials armed with fly whisks. In ancient Greek mythology, Myiagros – literally ‘he who chases the flies’ – was worshipped in order to keep flies away from important sacrificial ceremonies.

So, if humans have been trying to kill flies for as long as the two have shared the planet, then why are there still so many of them? The truth is, there aren’t. At least, there aren’t as many as there could have been.

Running the numbers

Left to their own devices, a pair of flies could easily spawn six or seven generations and billions of offspring in just six months. That’s enough to blanket the entire Earth with a layer of flies many feet deep. Fortunately, according to research by University of California entomologist Fred Legner, this could never happen. The natural elements curtail populations, with too much heat drying out fly eggs or too much rain drowning them. Many animals also eat or kill flies – including us – and this keeps the insect’s population at perhaps 2% of its full potential.

Bernard Greenberg, international fly authority and professor of biological sciences at the University of Illinois, agrees that fly numbers are controlled by many forces. These include natural predators – birds, reptiles and other insects – as well as a number of environmental factors. In fact, flies and their progeny are very sensitive to their surroundings. They need the right kind of food in the right amounts. They need optimal moisture levels and precise temperatures to keep mating, laying eggs, growing and metamorphosing from egg to larva, to pupa, to fly, and back to egg again.

Temperature is probably the most critical factor. Because flies are essentially tropical creatures, they function better when it is warmer. At 10 or 11ºC they lose the ability to fly; at 7ºC they just about lose consciousness; and at even a touch below freezing, they die within a couple of hours. They will also die if the temperature climbs above 46 or 47ºC. In fact, flies are happiest and most productive when the mercury hovers around the early 30s.

Despite these sensitivities, flies are ubiquitous. The housefly, in particular, is found in mind-boggling numbers all over the world. It can survive the harshest winter in the iciest clime, as long as there is a human house, barn or hut in which to shelter. That said, Professor Greenberg believes that Africa is the cradle of both human and fly-kind. That is probably why the African continent is home to the largest number of fly species and sub-species. It is also home to the greatest risk of fly-borne disease – which brings us to the real reason flies and humans are unlikely to stop killing each other any time soon.

How flies kill humans

Flies make particularly good carriers for disease-causing organisms, thanks to their taste for both organic waste and human food. Dysentery, typhoid, cholera, salmonella, poliomyelitis, tapeworm, eye infections such as trachoma and conjunctivitis, and skin infections such as yaws, cutaneous diphtheria and leprosy, can all be borne by flies.

Picture it: while loitering on something rotten, a fly encounters a disease-causing microorganism. This microorganism either attaches itself to the fly’s body – in which case, it will survive for just a few hours – or it gets eaten and enters the fly’s gut, where it could persist for a number of days. During that time, perhaps the fly lands directly on you – or, more indirectly, on your next meal – where the organism on board is either rubbed off or excreted from the fly’s body.

The insect’s characteristic way of eating aids in the infective process. With only a feeding tube, or proboscis, and no biting gear in its mouth, a housefly can only ingest liquids. When finding itself on a chicken drumstick, for example, the insect uses its proboscis to regurgitate some of its last meal – quite possibly consumed on a manure pile or landfill – which contains stomach contents and digestive juices. These mix with and dissolve the solid chicken into something that’s easier to suck up. But a microorganism from the manure pile can easily be left behind.

While flies are not solely responsible for the spread of infectious disease – in many cases, transmission happens more directly through human-to-human contact or contaminated water or food – researchers and public-health pundits agree that they pose a significant health problem. This is especially true in areas with inefficient and inadequate refuse removal. The very presence of flies can be a sign that conditions are less than hygienic – and the more flies, the less hygienic they probably are.

More waste will attract more flies and provide more disease-causing agents for them to pick up and carry around. This suggests that more sanitary areas will actually be home to cleaner flies – and they are. An average fly can host more than 1.9m bacteria, but some scientists say that a slum-dwelling specimen could be carrying up to 33m bacteria within its gut and half a billion more on the outside of its body. It makes sense that fly infestations and fly-borne infections are more of a challenge in developing countries and communities.

Infectious or non-infectious, flies are always and unfailingly annoying. A single fly buzzing around a quiet kitchen is enough to spoil both the cook’s mood and the broth. They can’t help it; it’s just what they do. It is also the reason that humans have spent so much time and energy finding ways to eliminate them.

There was even a brief period, post-second world war, when flies in homes, farms and restaurants were targeted with chlorinated hydrocarbons and DDT. A heavy-handed approach, to say the least – akin to burning down a house to combat a flea problem. The toxins did put a damper on fly populations, but they also poisoned people, animals, beneficial insects and entire ecosystems, while surviving flies developed some degree of immunity to the pesticides.

Thus, the search for meaningful fly control continues. It’s a testament to the insect’s ability to fly in the face of our most vicious and valiant scientific eradication plans.

How humans kill flies

The most widespread fly-killing methods are either physical or chemical. According to a 2004 fly-control report by the WHO, larger-scale, longer-term results call for preventative measures, like better sanitation and improved hygiene. In the meantime, let’s examine ...

Table of contents

• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• Part 1: Introducing the fly
• Part 2: The insect industry, past and present
• Part 3: The business of repairing the future
• Publishing details