Ynsect, the French company that’s starting up has identified nourishing, cheap and the local alternative to the soybeans as protein’s vital source in the animal feed. Clue happens to be in the name.
It is not only Ynsect that is looking to the invertebrates for meeting a jump for demand of fish and meat, and also for the feed, in the coming decades.
The flies of type black soldier, commonly the housefly larvae, yellow mealworms and silkworms were among the very promising species as regards output of industrial feed in one report the previous month by FAO, food agency of United Nations.
According to Food and Agriculture Organization’s report, insects have the natural job to serve as the food for many farmed species of livestock and this job could be reconsidered as feed serving for specific fish and poultry species.
Ynsect’s co-founder, Jean-Gabriel Levon said that new sources of protein were quite essential in such a market where the costs are just set to increase.
He said that insects seem to be interesting source and that could be locally bred and that everyone is in a situation where resources are getting expensive and scarcer.
According to FAO, protein like fishmeal, meat meal and soymeal constitute 60-70% of food’s price.Prices of soybean have got even above being doubled in the previous decade because of rising demand and the prices of fishmeal also have jumped.
The company, two years old, is developing a meal based on insects that can make up five to thirty percent food products, according to Levon.
Ynsect, having 10 rivals across the globe, now is raising funds for building 1st European production unit for insect meal by the year 2014-2015. A part of plant, at much heat, will be breeding insects whereas the other will crush them to powder.
Its aim is to use it on beetles and flies and according to Levon, a big advantage is they could just eat anything, for instance, leftovers of human food like the potato peelings.
When they are crushed, the co-products like shells could be used within pharmaceutical sector, being helpful in wastewater treatments and cosmetics.
What more could be said, the droppings of insects make excellent fertilizer.
Levon said that the insects drink little water and their droppings tend to be dry. He said they are like sand along with having all qualities required for classic fertilizer.
Head of France’s industry of animal feed(SNIA), Stephane Radet said that he was quite cautious because this protein product will need to prove itself in front of feed makers as well as win acceptance of public.
He said that for any new material to get entry in chain of manufacturing it has got to meet the criteria of safety, competitiveness, quality and acceptability within food sector and processors and towards the chain’s bottom is the consumer.
While there is one other pioneering company, AgriProtein Technologies of South Africa, which is rearing the house flies as well as using the insect flour as the feed of cattle, this isn’t allowed in European Union where crisis regarding disease of mad cow in late 1990s led to the caution over use of the processed proteins of animals (PAPs).
The PAPs, especially when bovine proteins were given to cattle, were accused for outbreak of bovine related spongiform encephalopathy or BSE.
PAPs use for feeding fish has been approved by European Commission from 1st June and that includes the insect meal. This might allow their usage in poultry and pig feed from the year 2014 and so lifting ban on the by-products of animals that was imposed during outbreak of BSE.
European Union imports around 70% material that’s protein-rich for the animal feed. European Feed Manufacturer’s Federation Fefac says that European market which is for processed feed of animals is worth 455bn euros for a year.
It is the aim of Ynsect to start off with the feed of fish, in which meal based on insect can replace the much scarce fish oil and fish meal.
According to FAO, the fish farming tends to be the sector for animal food that is fastest growing and would need expansion sustainably in order to meet the increasing demand.
The trials on some species of fish showed that the diets where around 50% fish meal got replaced with the meal of grass hopper produced equivalent good results to fish meal only, according to FAO.
One step ahead a day could be to have the insects reared for consumption by humans directly, according to FAO, and it also said that insects feed already over 2bn humans in Asia, South America and Africa.
But the regulations of EU don’t allow for this, more of research is required over such issues as allergies and just some daring restaurants located in Europe happen to be experimenting this for the eager clients.
Levon said that as regards targeting market for human food, that would be another time and that eating insects tend to be a laugh and that wasn’t something that would happen any time soon.
