SUSTAINABILITY 66 FEED & ADDITIVE MAGAZINE June 2025 INSECTS: EUROPE’S CIRCULAR PROTEIN REVOLUTION Christophe Derrien Secretary-General IPIFF – International Platform of Insects for Food and Feed Europe’s sustainability challenge will not be solved by importing more plant-based protein from overseas or by spreading misinformation about homegrown industries, but by scaling the innovation already taking place within our borders. Insect farming offers Europe a science-backed, circular and homegrown protein solution. Grounded in rigorous Life Cycle Assessments (LCA) and aligned with the EU’s sustainability ambitions, the sector should play a pivotal role in sustainable innovation - reshaping feed, food, and the bioeconomy from the inside out. As the European Union sharpens its focus on circularity, resilience, and food security, the insect farming sector has become a strategic player. This homegrown industry has been the fastest-growing source of sustainable and alternative protein production in Europe - and it is time for the European Union to fully embrace its role in this transformation. At the heart of this story is science - particularly the application of robust LCAs to measure the environmental performance of insect production systems. But this is also a story of innovation, circularity, and how Europe’s agri-food sector can meet today’s sustainability demands with tomorrow’s solutions. SCIENCE, NOT SPECULATION: THE ROLE OF LCAs IN ASSESSING SUSTAINABILITY Scientific rigour, particularly in the form of LCAs, is a foundational pillar of the European insect sector. These assessments evaluate the environmental footprint of production systems across their full life cycle - including land and water use, greenhouse gas emissions, and energy inputs. Hopefully, these would also take into account the broader ‘positive’ or ‘negative’ externalities associated with the production, transformation and transport of the considered products, e.g. by assessing how these activities influence local biodiversity and affect the well-being and livelihoods of nearby communities. Insects are, by design, resource-efficient. They require significantly less land and water than conventional livestock, produce fewer emissions, and thrive on bio-based by-products that would otherwise go to waste. These advantages have been validated by numerous peer-reviewed LCAs conducted across Europe - with data representing a wide variety of species, substrates, and industrial models. Yet, despite this science-based approach, we are witnessing a troubling rise in misinformation. Some actors outside the insect industry, without access to representative EU-wide datasets, are publishing distorted analyses or extrapolating generalisations from incomparable contexts and general literature, thereby excluding relevant primary data generated
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