ISSUE FOCUS FEED & ADDITIVE MAGAZINE August 2025 63 Aquaculture Waste as Insect Feed: AN UNFULFILLED PROMISE FOR A MORE SUSTAINABLE CIRCULAR ECONOMY Ron Shavit Sales Director FreezeM Aquaculture waste as insect feed, mainly Black Soldier Fly feed, offers a promising path toward circular food systems by transforming fish industry residues into highquality protein. Trials show technical feasibility, but regulatory barriers—especially in Europe—limit broader adoption. While countries like Thailand and Chile are advancing, safety concerns and legal restrictions still block progress. Can innovation and policy finally align to unlock this untapped resource? Aquaculture is often held up as a solution to overfishing, yet the industry itself generates substantial volumes of biological waste, everything from blood, guts, and mortalities to nutrient-rich sludge and uneaten feed. Often seen as a growing sustainability issue, these materials may actually represent one of the greatest underused assets in circular food production.1 Black Soldier Fly (BSF) larvae are uniquely equipped to transform these low-value residues into high-quality protein and fat, creating a closedloop potential: Fish waste feeds the larvae, larvae feed the fish. At FreezeM, we are working with farmers across the globe to test these ideas in practice. Some customers are experimenting with alternative substrates and are even eyeing the future potential of incorporating fish blood into BSF diets. These are small steps, but they’re precisely the kind of curiosity that drives innovation. BSF: FROM DECOMPOSER TO FEED INGREDIENT BSF larvae are more than waste processors; they’re miniature biorefineries. Several studies have shown that larvae fed aquaculture sludge and fish offal can reach commercial weight and deliver high protein content with favorable fatty acid profiles.2 Notably, larvae raised on marine residues, such as fish viscera, have shown increased omega-3 content10, making them particularly attractive for aquafeed formulations, though above a certain threshold, heavy metals and ash content began to accumulate in larval tissue3, underlining the importance of balanced feed composition and risk monitoring. Nevertheless, these results demonstrate a compelling technical case for using aquaculture side streams in insect production. THE CIRCULARITY PARADOX IN EUROPE Despite the scientific progress and growing in-
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