Allan Finney |
A world expert in entomology says that introducing insects into the world food chain would help to alleviate food shortages and make North American and world food production much more efficient and profitable.
“Millions of tons of low-value or negative value byproducts are produced every day and this could be converted into high protein feed ingredients,” says Dr. Craig Sheppard, a recognized expert in Black Soldier Fly larvae production.
While visions of people ordering up stir-fried larvae are the usual response to raising insects as food, large-scale production of insect larvae would typically be used to feed animals.
“People don’t have to eat these insects directly because they can be used as a high-value animal feed,” he said. “This would make our food production systems much more efficient than they are now.”
“Insects are nature’s ultimate recyclers,” he said. “You can add a production facility to a food processing plant or to a hog barn and convert low-value or negative value organics into usable protein.
Even though the insects feed on byproducts, they have a much better feed conversion ratio than higher-order animals such as chickens or pigs. They can consume twice their body mass per day and are “voracious” feeders, says Dr. Sheppard. “In large-scale numbers, these insects will outperform any farm animal.”
Designs for large-scale production facilities using the Black Soldiery Fly have been developed and manual testing of the systems on a commercial basis has taken place over the last five years.
It is estimated that in the United States alone fully half of all food produced is wasted. By converting this back into usable protein, the investment in the wasted food can be efficiently recovered. Millions of tons of byproducts are available for this process.
Potential feed ingredients include field culls of fruits and vegetables, food processing byproducts, meat and dairy wastes, fish offal, human food wastes, animal manures, brewer’s grains, poultry processing byproducts and other problematic or low-value waste streams. Many of the waste streams suitable for these systems are contributing to environmental problems or wind up in landfills.
“If you looked at a brewery or hog barn, the spent grains or manure can be economically shipped only about 60 miles or less,” he said. “If you converted it into protein with this system you could ship it across the nation or even export it profitably.”
“The process is 100% efficient,” says Dr. Sheppard. “Everything that goes into an insect production plant is converted into usable animal feed products or a high-value soil amendment.” By converting these materials, North American and world food production systems would be much more efficient and much more profitable.
Dr. Sheppard’s company, Organic Value Recovery Solutions, is now looking to automate the system for large scale production and is actively seeking industry or environmental partners.