An enterprising Chinese woman has turned her house into a breeding ground for 100,000 cockroaches and sending them to pharmaceutical companies to be used in some Chinese medicines.
Yuan Mexia, a 37-year-old pharmacy employee in Fujian province in eastern China, breeds the cockroaches in her countryside home as they are used in some Chinese medicines.
She packs the cockroaches off to pharmaceutical companies for around USD 100 a kilo after killing them by drowning them in water, and drying them in the sun.
But Yuan says that during their short lives with her, she treats the cockroaches "like her children".
"These are all my children, my babies," she says. Yuan resides at another house in Siqian county, but visits the breeding house every day, reports Hong Kong's South China Morning Post.
Yuan, now a local celebrity for her offbeat side project, raises mainly Palmetto bugs, a large and winged cockroach species common in the United States. They thrive in damp conditions and have a preference for sweets and starch.
