Feed & Additive Magazine Issue 2 March 2021

SPECIAL STORY 64 FEED & ADDITIVE MAGAZINE March 2021 INSECT-BASED Protein Sources SUSTAINABILITY OF INSECT INGREDIENTS DEMONSTRATED The opening of InnovaFeed’s industrial-scale insect production facility and the publication of its Life Cycle Analysis – the first one based on actual production data from an industrial-scale facility - demonstrates the sustainability of its insect ingredients and points out the differences in environmental impacts between production models. G lobal food production has nearly tripled since 1960 to meet the demand of a grow- ing population, and diet evolution has led to an increased need for animal products: fish and meat consumption per capita doubled between 1960 and 2018. This increasing demand for animal protein also stimulated the demand for feed ingredients thereby intensifying the pressure on limited natural resources. In this context, the FAO points out the urgent need to use alternative feeds: the requirement for traditional feed ingredients will not be met even by the most optimistic forecasts and the gap be- tween the demand and supply is only expected to widen in the upcoming decades. This provides a compelling reason to explore locally available feed ingredients. Insects are part of the natural diet of multiple an- imals, and therefore are a potential source of feed ingredients for fish, shrimp, poultry, and swine di- ets. Black soldier fly larvae have been identified as a source of high-quality protein and fatty acids neces- sary for animal development. FIRST LCA OF INDUSTRIAL-SCALE INSECT PRODUCTION DEMONSTRATES THE SUSTAINABILITY OF INSECT INGREDIENTS The sustainability of insects is generally acknowl- edged based on its production model that is both zero-waste – the entire insects being valorized (oil in monogastric breeding, protein in aquafeed and frass as a fertilizer) – and circular – due to insects’ ability to upcycle low-grade agricultural by-prod- ucts into high quality nutrients for animal and plant nutrition. The latter is particularly true for Black Soldier Flies which have the ability to feed on wet byproducts hence avoiding an expensive and energy-intensive drying step that would oth- erwise be required. Yet, few studies precisely quantified the sustain- ability of insect production, and in particular none were performed on industrial-scale insect facility in production. All Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) that have been so far performed were based on partial or aggre- gated data derived from pilot-scale facilities - until InnovaFeed published the results of the LCA per- formed on its industrial-scale facility which opened in November 2020. Chloé Phan Van Phi Head of Sales and Marketing InnovaFeed