Next Webinar, Friday 11 December at 12:00 GMT (UTC): Jo Wise, Monkfield Nutrition
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Jo started breeding insects commercially around 30 years ago, principally supplying the reptile food market. Today, his company, Monkfield Nutrition Ltd, employs 120 people in the UK, is the largest commercial breeder of insects in the UK, and has just relocated to larger premises giving them significantly increased capacity to be able to supply the human food market. Four species of crickets are available for the market, Acheta domesticus (house cricket), Gryllodes sigillatus (banded cricket), Gryllus bimaculatus (black cricket) and Gryllus assimilis (Silent cricket), as well as the desert locust, Schistocerca gregaria. Currently they can supply around 700 kg of dried product per week.
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To Register: Apply in the SHOP page of the Woven Network website
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Webinar Report:
Friday 13 November 2020: David Drew
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This webinar is available on the Woven Network YouTube site. The following summary is taken from that and recounts the views expressed during the webinar.
Insects as food
Insects as food has its place. It’s a speciality thing, nice, quirky and interesting. Historically, some groups in the world in small parts of their culture have eaten some insects. Africa is reputed to have widespread insect eating but there’s no evidence for this. Mapone worm is eaten in Kenya, and elsewhere eating insects can be a treat or a bit of fun. Nowhere for decades have insects been part of a staple diet. The same is true of Asia. It’s not a prospect as a serious nutrition source for developing nations. Chicken may not be as good bioconverters as insects, but they are pretty good, and very palatable and nutritious for everyone.
As the world changes over the next few years, insects may become useful as a low value meat alternative. For example, a burger with a really good sauce can contain meat, vegetables, or insect protein and still have delicious taste and texture. When the price of insect protein has fallen or it has demonstrable benefits of low environmental impact, it could be useful as a wholesale ingredient in cooking, something like a rehydrated meal.
There is still to emerge a particular advantage of insect material in the diet or cooking. There are positive effects in monogastric chickens and pigs, and these could be extrapolated to humans. However, human diet is much more driven by affordability and what we want to eat than what is beneficial. Remember that a short time ago the poor used only to be able to afford to eat oysters, and now they are an expensive delicacy. It may be that necessity forces the introduction of insect protein into the diet.
Manure
Agriprotein and the Insect Technology Group are studying manures, not human manures, as a feedstock. One advantage is that they are very uniform and predictable. Consuming manures in a cyclical system is very attractive and has been proposed for developing countries. Unless a system is applicable to a first world country beforehand it is likely to be doomed if it’s crammed into a container and shipped to Africa. Human faecal systems have been tried for island tourism – Bermuda and Mauritius – where there’s not the soil to disperse faecal matter, and a property developer in Aspen, Colorado who could not obtain connection to a mains sewer. When insect systems succeed in these first world applications, the solutions can then be rolled out to Africa.
The reliability of manure from farmed animals is that it’s known what the animals have had to eat. If there are hormones or chemicals in the feed, they can be expected in the manure, and they can be removed from the process if required. Insect larvae can be fed on up to 50% manure in the feedstock. More than that diminishes larval growth. The gate fees to accept the manure waste are how the insect management tool is funded. Larvae are about 40% fat; so extracting oil could contribute too. The oil resembles lard or butter and is rendered liquid and clear at body temperature – not unlike ghee. It can substitute for palm oil, is excellent to include in layers pellets for hens, weaning piglets, and can always be channelled into industrial oils, but at a lower price.
Whether to introduce into the human food chain larvae fed on human faecal matter is contentious. One intermediary species before humans consume an animal fed on these larvae is one approach. Another is to give the protein to fur animals, mink or foxes that are not going to appear in the human food chain. There are few objections to this, but there’s an emotional rejection to feeding pet dogs in the same way.
This is technically possible already, but European regulations do not allow it and this is being challenged by International Platform of Insects for Food and Feed (IPIFF). https://ipiff.org/ Feeding insects to animals is not forbidden, but insects are deemed to be farmed animals and their feedstock has to be the same standard as food fed to other farmed animals. IPIFF is lobbying to expand what can be fed to larvae, for example, supermarket and restaurant waste, and swill. Manures are homogenous, but supermarket waste varies by season and during the festivities of the customers.
Frass has a loamy texture and sells well in conurbations, but less well where there is peat readily available. It is more sustainable to use it locally, but it can be dehydrated, pelletised and transported at extra cost for domestic and farming fertiliser and compost. The extracted water is reused in the factory. Frass is sold to compost companies who measure nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium concentrations and combine it into useful mixtures. It is produced in large quantities; so, it may not generate much revenue, but unsold it would be costly to dispose.
Cost of insect products and production
Cost of cricket powder has fallen by 33 to 50 % in the last two years. There is little supply of insect meal at present; so prices can be kept high. Fish meal prices are very volatile with inconstant supply. Soya is more predictable. Input can have negative costs, for example being paid to take supermarket waste. Remote purchasers can demand conditions such as zero landfill in their supply chain, leaving the producer to bear the burden of waste disposal. Factories are very expensive to build and maintain with labour and energy costs.
Sustainable protein prices will remain high. Protein is a scarce resource with great demand. Recent announcements of hugely expensive insect production buildings are likely to pay for themselves, but not necessarily in the way expected when the factories were planned. Developing processes and technology is more controllable when using proprietary material, but this is less sustainable. To incorporate waste requires being able to deal with erratic supplies of variable material. Start-ups are best served by grants. Subsidies create dependencies as in the biogas market and can have unintended and environmentally damaging effects.
High tech robotic insect production devices are inherently unreliable and expensive to maintain. In production, waste receiving requires mechanical mixing of large amounts of material with heavy simple equipment. The part that involves flies can be high tech to control light and humidity and move items that weigh little. Once larvae are put to prepared feedstock, modern automated storage and racking technology from the distribution industry comes into play and are displacing fork-lift trucks.
Inherent to the use of diverse waste as a feedstock is contamination with unwanted species of insects and mites. Selection of species can help with this. House flies, Musca domestica, and blo flies, Calliphoridae are excellent at reproducing, but are selective eaters. Black soldier fly, Hermetia illucens, is an excellent grazer and will eat almost anything, including other contaminating species if the contaminants are no more than 5%. Some waste, such as fruit, will require to be heat treated to kill the inevitable contamination with eggs.
The variability of waste poses challenges trying to produce a consistent insect product. Seasonal changes with gluts of fresh produce require the waste to be blended with other material and tested for example for pH and fat content. Also, testing the product may allow interventions such as a de-fatting machine.
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Responses sought from Woven-Network members
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Woven Network has been involved in correspondence with other national bodies (and, now, IPIFF) to prepare a letter requesting national Governments to allow insect products to be sold in their countries. The countries represented are:
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- Belgium
- Denmark
- Finland
- France
- Germany
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- Italy
- Netherlands
- Portugal
- Spain
- Sweden
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UK is clearly in a different position regards a European Market and the European Commission. Woven Network has, however, pushed for dialogue with IPIFF, given their good understanding of European regulations and experience of working with the European Commission.
The aim is to complete the letter for submission before the end of the year. There is a meeting on 10 December to finalise the letter. Would Woven Network members please inform nick.rousseau@woven-network.co.uk the position they want Woven Network to take - ideally before 10 December? In particular:
- Do you support Woven allowing its logo to be used to show our support for the content?
- Would you want to see anything changed in the letter?
- Would you be happy for us to submit the letter to the UK Government DEFRA?
The current text of the letter sets out developments from the Novel Food Act (EC No 258/97) to the ruling on 1 October 2020, CJEU (Court of Justice of European Union), in case C-526/19 which clarified that whole insects were not considered by the original Novel Food Legislative Act (EC No 258/97).
Since then, national insect associations / federations have united to support each other, regardless the situation in their own country. This union of national federations wishes to support the outcome of this recent CJEU court ruling and expedite its implementation nationally.
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€800,000 for European insect-based food businesses
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The ValuSect consortium will launch a voucher call for €10,000, €20,000 or €40,000 on 1 December 2020 to accelerate the development of insect-based foods in North-West Europe. SMEs. 40 vouchers will be awarded over 3 years.
Suitable projects include technological services, food development and innovation, consumer acceptance and strategic business services, all related to insect-based food products.
Application to the ValuSect website requires:
1) Idea stage: submit application between 1 and 31 December 2020. Applicants succeeding to progress to second stage will hear by the end of January 2021.
2) Detailed stage: submit application between 1 and 15 February 2021. Awards made in March 2021.
Contact: valusect@thomasmore.be
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Project X promotes sustainability in the supply chains of organisations. Four of the ten projects supported by Project X involve insects. There will be webinars in December and 3-5 March 2021 to discuss the commitment to change and the impact of changing the ingredients of animal feed.
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Lallemand Biotech Live Webinar Series
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Session 3: ENTOYEAST, YEAST-BASED SOLUTIONS FOR INSECT REARING
Wed, Dec 9, 2020 9:00 AM - 10:00 AM GMT
Registration: https://register.gotowebinar.com/register/6769476899464723728
Anton Gligorescu, Specialist Insect production at Danish Technical Institute (DTI) in Aarhus, Denmark, will present his research in the insect rearing.
The title of his lecture is: "Utilization of yeast supplement for improving Hermetia illucens reproductive and rearing performance "
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