ISSUE FOCUS 34 FEED & ADDITIVE MAGAZINE October 2022 “Instead of taking simplistic view which insists on the use of insect meal as a fish meal replacement and focusing on the similarity between the two materials, we should instead be looking at how insect meal differs from fish meal, and thinking of insect-based ingredients as an entirely new product category, with new value propositions and use cases.” İnsect meal has become an increasingly popular topic of discussion amongst nutritionists & formulators across a range of different sectors, but the uptake & utilisation of this novel material is still relatively modest. Why is that? The level of understanding of insect production systems and their outputs (insect meal & insect oil), and Black Soldier Fly Larvae (BSFL) in particular has skyrocketed recently, with 80% of all insect-related papers (since 1950) being published in the last 2 years. These studies include product applications in a wide range of species, including; layers & broilers, starter & finisher pigs, shrimps & seabass, and many others. On reviewing a lot of these papers and listening to presentations at recent feed conferences, a trend has become clear. A trend which I see as being central to the slow uptake of insect-based products in productive animals - the comparison to fish meal and the focus on ‘fish meal replacement’. This stems largely from the insect meal manufacturers themselves (ourselves), whose messaging has focused on the potential for insect meal to be a silver bullet for food security, by promoting it as a fish meal replacement, and staking-out a Total Addressable Market of 5-6m MT per year. This immediately sets-up two issues; nutritional benchmarking and price anchoring. There are very few (if any) insect meal products which reach 65% Crude Protein, the common benchmark for fish meal. So, by comparing insect meal to fish meal on a Crude Protein basis, formulators tend to be disappointed when presented with only 50%-60% CP in insect meal. Secondly, insect meal is relatively expensive when valued primarily on the protein content, so achieving a price comparable to fish meal on a purely macro-nutrient basis is still beyond most manufacturers. In order to ‘replace fish meal’, the new product needs to be either cheaper than, or higher in protein than fish meal. Generally speaking, insect meal is rarely either. Instead of taking this simplistic view which insists on the use of insect meal as a fish meal replacement and focusing on the similarity between the two maUNLOCKING THE REAL VALUE OF INSECT MEAL Nick Piggott Co-founder and Co-CEO Nutrition Technologies
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