Pig International - May/June 2017 - 33
PigInternational ❙ 33 Are insects the animal feed of the future? There is going to be a devastating impact on the environment if insects are not re-entered into the food chain, warns Canadian insect farmer and co-founder of Entomo Farms, Jarrod Goldin. "Nature had it right to begin with," says Goldin, who raises a variety of insects including mealworms, waxworms, superworms and crickets for both consumers and backyard chicken farmers. "We're doing studies on poultry and aquaculture that are fed insects, and the benefits are tremendous because insects are more nutrient dense," he says. "Ironically, how could feeding an insectivore grain be better than feeding it a cricket?" Goldin has seen an increase in interest in insect protein for animal feed. But whether the animal feed industry is allowed to use insect protein in feed for food-producing animals ultimately comes down to government regulation. "This [government regulation] will take a while, and we'll need a ridiculous event to get the change made," says Goldin. Will insects feed the 9 billion? The future of insect protein in animal feed ultimately relies on innovation and government regulation. Nonetheless, researchers and producers are confident that insects will play a significant role in feeding the growing population. The question is when? ■ Meal worms are used for human nutrition and in livestock feeds in some countries and can be raised on some food waste and food manufacturing byproducts. Laura Fernandez is a freelance writer. Email her at laura@fernandezcommunications.com. May/June 2017 ❙ www.WATTAgNet.com iStockPhoto.com | andrewburgess eat according to recent research by Mark Lundy, an agronomist from the University of California Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources, and Michael Parella, an entomologist from UC Davis: Crickets Are Not a Free Lunch: Protein Capture from Scalable Organic Side-Streams via High-Density Populations of Acheta domesticus. The research studied the protein output of crickets that were fed different food substrates: crop residue, processed food waste and poultry feed. In the study, nearly all the crickets that were fed a diet solely of crop residue died while the crickets that were fed grain-based poultry feed had the highest amount of protein conversion. While this research focused on crickets, other insects, like the black soldier fly, may have differing conversion rates when fed a diet of food waste. Nonetheless, the study states that it's important to factor in the diet when calculating protein output from insects: "In order for insect cultivation to sustainably augment the global supply of protein, more work is needed to identify species and design processes that capture protein from scalable, low-value, organic sidestreams, which are not currently consumed by conventional livestock." Studies are being done to measure what effect adding a percentage of food waste to a grain-based diet would have without lowering the nutrient output of the insect. Utilizing food waste would both lower the cost of insect production and lower the amount of food that is sent to the landfill.
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