Silkworm poop as cheese whitener?

[Deborah Stevenson]

In <dyanega-3003991433520001 at entmuseum4.ucr.edu> dyanega at pop.ucr.edu (Doug Yanega) writes:

>The subject says it all. I got an urgent question a few minutes ago as to
>whether it was true that silkworm feces, which is high in chlorophyll, was
>used as a whitening agent during cheese manufacturing. This seems a little
>too weird to be an urban myth, but I'd like to confirm it one way or the
>other.

Can't say for sure, but here are my thoughts nonetheless, this being
Usenet and all.

This specific claim isn't on PETA's animadversions list.  What *is* there,
however, is the following:  "Silk powder is obtained from the secretion of
the silkworm. It is used as a coloring agent in face powders, soaps, etc."
While I don't consider the source authoritative, I'm prepared to go with
that thought for the moment; certainly "silk protein" is being bandied
about promiscuously at the moment and we seem to be squeezing those little
worms dry of everything they've got.

I am lamentably uninformed on the extrusions of the silkworm until they
turn into blouses and skirts, so I'm not really in a position to debate
the poop/secretion dichotomy, and I'm baffled as to how one would attach
the diapers anyway.  So I'll leave that for vermiform experts.

So for me the question now is whether said silk powder is actually
appearing in cheese, and if so, which cheese.  Most cheeses aren't
supposed to be white and the effort is made to tint it in the other
direction  (Steve Jenkins, in _The Cheese Primer_, outlines cheese
coloration practices).  Nor could I find any indication that silkworms are
the source of any component of vegetable rennet, which was my early
thought.  So either it's not a whitener, it's not in cheese at all, or
it's appearing only in cheese that really needs to be white, of which
there's not all that much.  And it's not in Philly Cream Cheese, as far as
I can tell from the label.  So much for my at-hand white cheese sample.  

Of course, we don't know if the stuff is majorly cheap or comparatively
expensive, do we?  I don't know whether the likely suspects are
house-brand cream cheeses or fancy high-end stuff.  Frankly,
I doubt that the artisanal chevre folks are much for dumping in silk
powder.  I would recommend that the questioning individual turn his gaze
to your majorly manufactured "Giggling Goat"-type cheeses in the
supermarket dairy case.  It may be that if it's used as a coloration agent
it'll simply be entered under "natural colors," however, as annatto seems
to be for the orange cheeses.

Abstract:  I don't know.  Here are vaguely relevant speculations.

Deborah Stevenson
(stevenso at alexia.lis.uiuc.edu)