Review article
From waste to feed: A review of recent knowledge on insects as producers of protein and fat for animal feeds

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogsc.2020.03.003Get rights and content

The use of insect-derived products in animal feed is a field of growing interest. Applying the circular economy principle, insects efficiently bioconvert organic waste into new products enabling advantages and value at different steps: reduction of waste management costs (landfilling, anaerobic digestion, incineration), lower resource use than other protein and fat productions, and value gain from the sale of insect-derived. After introducing the potential use of insects to upgrade food waste for animal feed purposes and briefly discussing the feed sector and the regulations that govern and limit the insect mass production and uses, this review presents the latest and most interesting research (from 2019) on the use of insect as feed.

Section snippets

Introduction: food waste and animal feed—insects as part of the solution?

Globally, about one-third of all the food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted within the food supply chain [1]. This corresponds to approximately 1.3 billion tonnes of food getting wasted every year but also to a tremendous loss of resources that have been invested in producing food (e.g. water, land, fossil fuels). At the same time, the compound feed industry exceeded one billion tonnes of production in 2018, generating a turnover of more than € 360 billion [2]. Within the

Feed for insects and insects as feed—European legislation

The main aim of the food production chain is to produce nutritious and safe food for the consumers, which means to ensure ‘food safety’. When food comes from livestock animals, it is also necessary to provide nutritious and safe feed for the animals, that is to guarantee ‘feed safety’. Feed and Food safety regulations are therefore in place to ensure that feed and food stuff do not represent a danger to human health, animal health or the environment. Recently, the EU adopted the ‘Circular

Insects grown on waste material

In the EU, only selected types of waste materials of vegetable origin are allowed for use in insect production, leading to some concerns about sustainability, as products which could be used as animal feed or human food will have a higher environmental impact than when using organic side streams [11∗, 12, 13∗]. It has to be pointed out that technologies used to produce insects are still in their infancy, and there is large space for improvement, both regarding the type of substrate used to grow

Insect-based ingredients in compound feeds

Among the ingredients used to produce compound feeds, those rich in proteins constitute the most important and expensive part of the diet. In particular, animal-derived feedstuffs provide highly digestible proteins with great biological value. A wide array of studies, with an especially large increase in published studies the last few years, have proven the suitability of insects as a high-quality source of nutrients for animal feeds [5∗, 6∗, 7,9].

When formulating diets, the digestibility and

Insect ingredients with health-promoting properties

There is substantial evidence that the use of diets with insect meals could have positive effects on animals’ immune system and microbiota [27] and recent results are reported in Table 4. The increased diversity in microbiota has been attributed to the content of chitin in insect meals, which is not digestible in most animals and promote growth of certain groups of bacteria, with positive effects on gut health. Insect chitin is also endorsed with immunostimulating effects [27]. The lipid

Conclusions

The mass production of insects on waste can help to reduce the environmental impact of food waste as well as generate a sustainable novel feed ingredient for the animal-feed sector. Applied research shows promising results and insect-derived products are currently recognised as one of the most interesting and sustainable sources of nutrients. Insect-derived products also show potential as health enhancers, being a possible source of ingredients for feeds targeting specific challenges or life

Funding

This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Author contributions

All authors equally contributed to the conceptualization, writing, review and editing of this paper.

Declaration of Competing Interest

Nothing declared.

Acknowledgements

All authors thank the SUSINCHAIN (SUStainable INsect CHAIN—GA n. 861976—H2020_IA) project.

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