INTERVIEW FEED & ADDITIVE MAGAZINE June 2025 61 require farmland — which is a huge contrast to traditional meat production, with its high demand for land and water and its contribution to deforestation. Insects, for instance, feed on agricultural by-products that would otherwise go to waste. Even the frass — insect excrement — is recycled as fertilizer. Personally, I think we should pay more attention to water use in the pet industry, not just carbon emissions. If 80% of dogs in the world were fed with alternative proteins, we’d save millions of liters of water. How does MicroBell differ most from traditional pet food? Fuhrmann: Both insect protein and microbial protein have their benefits. But insect-based food isn’t vegan, so it’s important to offer options in both fields. But from a sustainability standpoint, FeedKind is exceptional. Unlike many fermentation-based proteins, it doesn’t require external energy inputs during production. The bacteria are activated using methane gas — a very efficient process. There are still regulatory limits. For example, in wet food, we can’t use as high a concentration of FeedKind as in dry food. But we ensure all our formulations meet both FEDIAF and AAFCO standards. The world doesn’t need another chicken-based pet food. We want to be different. Our goal was to develop a truly vegan, nutritionally complete, everyday food — and with MicroBell, we believe we’ve achieved that. Hoffmann: We’re excited to be leading this movement. Our goal was to create a fully vegan dog food that could be fed daily—not just as an occasional snack or supplement. That’s still our main focus. We want to be pioneers, and more importantly, we want to give pet owners truly sustainable, innovative alternatives to the conventional products on the market. (Left to Right) Bert Fuhrmann, Sales Manager and Marcel Hoffmann, Managing Director of MarsaPet Photo: Courtesy of MarsaPet
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