I just had a good morning laugh:) cochinillo is a roasted suckling pig, yum yum. This scale insect goes by the name of Cochineal or to use the sci name of Dactylopius coccus. Now you can have fun informing yourself about it on the web. Best Regards.

Yea, gotta be cochineal, once used as red food colouring... but its a scale infestation, essentially

Unfortunately for vegetarians, cochineal (also known as E120) is still often used in foods, especially with the retail industry's return to natural colourings for health reasons.
It is used for red/pink etc colouring and I haven't yet found a branded battenburg that doesn't contain it.

Hmm, well, Longleaf, I always try to avoid anything with red colouring in it if at all possible, and it may be there's a return to cochineal since Red2G (E128) was banned in the EU in 2007. There are other red colorants, but they're all coal tar dyes and therefore not desirable for consumption either. Believe it or not, they use some of them in medicinal drugs here, as I know to my cost...

The only problem is that cochineal scale only lives on cacti in the Opuntia group--i.e., Prickly Pears and Chollas. Not sure what this fellow is--maybe a mealybug of some kind.

When I bought my Kermes oak I was told that it was the foodplant of a "cochineal" insect. Wikipedia says that it does host a scale insect that produces red dye - although not the one now used in our food.
Tugbrethil is correct saying that the Opuntia is the food of what we commonly now know as the cochineal insect - the American/Mexican Dactylopius coccus.

Although I found it interesting to learn that there are also Armenian and Polish cochineal insects which were more previously used, before Dactylopius coccus. See:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_cochineal

OK, all you need to do is to paint it with meths. Does for it in seconds.

thanks to all and steragram i will try meths