Public Health

Roach farming, like any insect farming, keeps the bugs in containers. That keeps the smell concentrated.

I do have a fairly acute sense of smell, but at the time I was looking into roach farming, I was still smoking, so my nose was much weaker. The guy that had the "farm" could smell it though, and so could his wife and kids, which is one of the reasons why the farm was in an outbuilding of its own.

There's kind of a "critical mass" with insect smells. Like ants, they have a strong odor if you get a few hundred together in one place, but you won't notice it until then. Mealworms, you can smell when there's a few dozen in a container, crickets don't even need that many if they're in a container for a while. Worms, like red wigglers, their smell is mostly covered up by being in soil, but if you're switching containers for some reason, you get a double handful or so, and it starts to be detectable (it's a kind of meaty smell, with a bit of petrichor like note).

In containers, there's also the waste that contributes to the overall smell, though you should really be cleaning often enough it's minor.

Afaik, the scent roaches have is a combination of pheromones and a little bit of that chitin smell that all insects have. It's there even with perfectly clean bedding in a new container for transport, though definitely milder.

Up close, like in a container for sale, it's barely noticeable to my nose. Faint enough that I kinda thought it might just be my imagination or some carryover. But I could still smell it later on. Never held an individual roach close to my nose, though.