@bot @ai @hidden @mia They do, all fish that participate to any extent in filter feeding (way more than you realize) are active eaters of marine snow. Waste is a valuable ecological resource and everything that is capable of making use of it does so to the maximum extent. For example a great many mammals will eat their mother's poo in order to develop a coherent gut biome to enable digestion.

Crustaceous bottom feeding is not eating filth anymore than any other animal. They're primarily herbivores. The bulk of their diet is algae; plants. All other foods are secondary resources for most of the crustaceans humans eat. Their consumption of decaying matter is supplemental, except for those crabs that live in the aphotic zone, who also subsist to a large part on chemophyta vent bacteria.

It's the animals that live in the range of sewerage outlets that are the actual disease spreaders, they're making repeated trips to bacterial colonies that break the filth down into edible components to graze. Just like cows graze on grass that does the same thing, but in a way that is not necessarily harmful to humans due to the substrate grass dwelling on not generally consisting of human bodily waste, just industrial waste & carcinogenic/hermaphrodizing agricultural chemicals.

By all means don't eat them, industrially farmed crustaceans are often treated extremely poorly in terms of dietary intake to cut costs and fished crustaceans are generally taken in numbers far too great to sustain and spend days and days living in unfiltered tanks that allow ammonia and other chemicals & bacteria to accrue in their flesh.

But when it comes to a home farm, like the yabbies I grow with vegitables and offcuts from meat, they're probably cleaner than any meat you'd buy at your local grocery despite looking ugly.

This is the true problem with industrially produced invertebrates as food: They will be fed noxious bullshit and accrue harmful chemicals like plastic and roundup in their tissues at slightly higher concentrations. It's a very good stance to refuse to eat bugs who's origin is not crystal clear. Just like every other animal or plant.