Insects could feed the animals of tomorrow’s meat industry

Is a sustainable food industry a hamburger made from a pig reared on insect feed? Convoluted legislation and possible health risks pose a challenge

 AgriProtein will rear enough flies (about 8.5bn) to produce seven tonnes of their maggot-based feed, MagMeal, every day. Photograph: ACE STOCK LIMITED / Alamy/Alamy

It works like this. AgriProtein collects abattoir waste and processes it into a feed for fly larvae. Cages are used to attract the flies to breed, and once their eggs have hatched, the larvae are dried and compressed into flakes or powder. The resulting mix is delivered to animal feed mills.

While a number of startups are trying to excite our taste buds by presenting insects in the form of cookies and tortilla chips, others such as AgriProtein are exploring how the nutrients in meat industry waste – blood, brains, guts – and manure can be recycled to produce insect feed for animals that are currently fed on the likes of fishmeal and soybean meal.

Jason Drew, co-founder of the South African startup which he set up with his brother David in 2010, says: “A third of all the fish we take out of our seas is ground up into fishmeal. The catches are unsustainable and the falling supply and increasing demand are leading to prices hitting new highs.”

AgriProtein raised $11m in funding this year. The money has helped Drew and his team to raise production to a level not seen before. Their first large-scale factory, which will start operating in 2015, will rear enough flies (about 8.5bn) to produce seven tonnes of their maggot-based feed, MagMeal, every day.

“We’ll produce 24 tonnes of larvae a day,” adds Drew. “That’s 24 tonnes of fish we don’t need to take from the sea, and less waste to landfill.”

 Video showing how MagMeal takes the pressure off the oceans by reducing the need for fishmeal

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation released a report (pdf)last year promoting the introduction of insects into both our diets and animal feed. It estimates that a burgeoning population will mean demand for meat and cereal will have increased sharply by 2050, affecting the supply and prices of animal feed. Teun Veldkamp, a senior researcher at Wageningen University’s Centre for Animal Nutrition, says that “other protein sources for livestock and aquaculture are urgently needed” and that insects are ideal because they can be “sustainably reared” on vegetable and domestic waste as well as byproducts from slaughterhouses.

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Some scientists believe that the answer to providing more protein could be artificial meat and products made from grounded insects, but startups recognise that for consumers, the thought of directly eating insects is often hard to stomach. A hamburger that comes from a pig reared on insect feed might be more palatable than a burger bun made from cricket flour.

AgriProtein’s maggot feed has been approved in South Africa for fish and chickens, but insects are subjected to varying convoluted regulatory processes in different countries. In the EU for instance, insects are treated like livestock once they have been dried and converted into a flake or powder form – the legislation was introduced in 2001 following an outbreak of mad cow disease. It means that processed animal proteins are banned from the feed of animals reared for human consumption. There is also a law against farmed animals being raised on waste such as manure.

Some experts, such as the team behind PROteINSECT, an EU-funded project investigating how flies can contribute to meeting future demands for protein, believe that more data and information (pdf) needs to be made available. There is a worry that insects used in animal feed could carry certain bacteria, and it’s unknown how much of a health risk this could pose to humans.

Despite concerns, Kees Aarts, co-founder of the Dutch startup Protix Biosystems, believes that sceptical members of the public shouldn’t think that businesses like his are merely rushing to join the insect-eating movement.

“Rushing things sounds like carelessness. It implies insects couldn’t provide high-quality nutrients,” says Aarts. “They can, and more importantly they can be produced with the highest safety and quality standards.”

Protix Biosystems set up the IPIFF (International Producers of Insects for Feed and Food) with other insect producers to help provide legislators with information on safety and quality. Its products are ready and awaiting approval to be made commercially available outside of the pet food market.

Aarts suggests that the legislation to allow insects in pig and poultry feed will change sooner rather than later – it was revised to allow use in aquaculture feed last year – and that it would be absurd if it didn’t. “As a feed ingredient it’s common sense … nature’s principles apply,” he says. After all, chickens tend to roam around and dig in the dirt for their fair share of bugs to gobble. Startups like his and Drew’s want to provide pigs and poultry with certified insects, and at the same time, move back closer to nature by creating a circular food chain.