The content of the article is reproduced in: the original article of the public account "Great Wall Pet Exhibition" (2021.03.02) (if there is infringement, please contact me to delete and modify).
Are you afraid of bugs? If you're trembling in the face of such creeping creatures, it's hard to imagine that one day they'll climb up to your table and your pet's rice bowl as a delicacy. However, all of this is rapidly becoming a reality
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="3" >01 Insect market explosion: THE EU gives the green light to eating mealworms</h1>
In January 2021, Forbes published an article revealing that the European Union has given the green light to eat mealworms, and that mealworms will soon appear on European menus, appearing in bars, smoothies and hamburgers, because the EU recognizes that it is safe and harmless for humans to eat mealworms. And that's just the first insect to hit the supermarket shelves — the European Union is likely to approve other insects soon.
A mealworm burger sold in a Supermarket in Switzerland
This is a breakthrough moment for large companies producing insect food. The companies have been lobbying the European Union to allow the products to be consumed in all european countries. But before the European Union gave the green light to mealworms, they were only sold in some supermarkets in Belgium, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Denmark and Finland.
It is foreseeable that in the future, eating insects is likely to become a trend and outlet in Europe and even the world.
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), with the global population soaring, resources increasingly strained, and the environment worsening, in order to solve the looming protein crisis, more than 2 billion people around the world have adopted bugs as part of their daily diet and found 1900 edible insect species.
In fact, insects are indeed a more environmentally friendly source of protein than pigs, cows and mutton.
Experiments at the University of Oxford have proved that insects are richer in protein and vitamins than beef and mutton, especially fruit flies, crickets, palm weevils and bees.
Protein and fat content of different insects Image source: precision nutritio
Nutritional value of 200 calories of crickets compared to beef
In the case of fruit flies, for example, a 100-square-meter fruit fly farming warehouse can produce protein equivalent to 100 hectares of soybeans. In addition, insects are the only food in nature that provides the 9 amino acids necessary for humans.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="14" >02 Will insect protein be applied to pet food? </h1>
Since insects are expected to become a new source of protein for humans in the future, will the application of insect protein to pet food be the general trend? Time will give us the answer, but let's guess first.
Back in 2019, a UK-based pet food startup, Yora, announced that 40 percent of the ingredients in its newly produced dog food came from an insect larvae called the black water fly, according to the BBC.
Dog food containing black water fly larvae
It is reported that the raw materials for feeding the larvae of the black water fly come from the kitchen waste in the Netherlands. The rapidly growing black water fly larvae feed on leftover human food, convert it into high-quality protein, and then process the larvae into dog food that can be eaten by dogs. Compared to the way beef cattle are fed by growing soybeans and then producing beef cattle into dog food, this seems to be a one-shot approach: it saves the Brazilian rainforest that was cut down for reclaiming the land needed to grow soybeans, while turning kitchen waste into treasure, and the higher protein conversion rate of insects further saves resources for the production of dog food.
Perhaps the biggest problem with this dog food derived from the black water fly larvae now is its price – a 12kg bag of dog food sells for £89.99 (about 780 yuan) on Yora's website, while the same amount of regular bagged dog food costs only £20-40 (about 173-347 yuan) on Amazon in the UK.
Not only Yora, but also Nestlé Purina announced in November 2020 that they will launch a new pet food containing alternative protein sources. This new protein includes other protein sources, including insect protein and plant proteins extracted from millet and broad beans, to promote its overall environmental action.
It is believed that in the future, there will be more and more brands that apply insect protein to pet food. There are several reasons for this:
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="22" > first, and the insect market is growing fast. </h1>
According to the "2019 Global and Chinese Insect Protein Industry In-Depth Research Report" issued by the New Thought Industry Research Center, the global insect protein market size in 2019 was 144 million US dollars, and it is expected to reach 1.336 billion US dollars by 2025, with a compound annual growth rate of 45.0% during the forecast period. Factors such as increasing demand for protein as a nutrient and increasing investment in R&D are driving the growth of the insect protein market.
The influx of a large amount of capital is bound to promote the breakthrough of insect protein technology, reduce the cost of insect protein, and the future insect protein pet food will be more easily accepted by consumers in terms of price.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="25" > second, insect protein is good for environmental protection. </h1>
Why is capital optimistic about insects adding to human diets? Because the rising consumption of meat has long overwhelmed the earth.
To meet the growing protein needs of a population of 7 billion people, the global livestock industry has quadrupled in size over the past half century, with an average annual meat production of 320 million tonnes.
Livestock farming occupies a lot of land, and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) reports that 26% of the world's ice-free land is currently used for animal husbandry, and 33% of farmland is used to produce feed.
Livestock also produces a large number of greenhouse gases, and the exhaust gases (mainly methane) produced by the annual hiccups and farts of 1.5 billion cattle around the world affect or even exceed the total carbon dioxide emitted by vehicles such as cars and airplanes, becoming the third largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the world.
From the perspective of protein conversion, to produce the same amount of protein, the cultivated land area required by insects is 1/8 of that of cattle pastures, the required water resources are only 1/15 of cattle, and greenhouse gas emissions can be reduced by 6-13 times.
Breeding insects also does not require a large amount of special feed, food scraps, debris or organic waste is enough to maintain the life of insects, so the amount of feed is only 1/12 of that of cattle.
Surveys show that many consumers are willing to pay higher prices for environmentally friendly foods.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="33" > third, insects have been accepted by more and more humans as food. </h1>
As mentioned earlier, more than 2,000 kinds of insects have been used to make food in the world, more than 2 billion people in the world eat insects, and there are even Internet celebrity restaurants in the world that specialize in making insect dishes.
The signature of the Japanese popular restaurant Ancicada is cricket ramen, which can be seen when served, and there is a complete fried cricket on the roast meat, but there are actually 100 crickets in each bowl of noodles.
Anyone who has tried this bowl of noodles is full of praise for cricket soup, like eating a bowl of thick and delicious seafood noodles. Antcicada's menu also features condiments made from cricket fermentation and "insect boiling" made from crickets, silkworms and locusts. According to reports, crickets are responsible for deliciousness, locusts with chicken flavor, but also crunchy, with peppers, quite a meal.
Now that humans have embraced insects as food, it's no surprise that they're willing to buy pet food containing insect protein for their pets.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="38" >03 Major enterprises in the insect protein market</h1>
Currently, major players in the insect protein market include AgriProtein Holdings Ltd (South Africa), EnviroFlight LLC (USA), Innovafeed (France), Ÿnsect (France), Hexafly (Ireland), Protix (Netherlands), Aspire Food Group (USA), EntomoFarms (Canada), Protifarm (Netherlands), Jimini (UK), Chapul Cricket Protein (US), Imago Insect Products GmbH (Germany) and Nature Creation (Beijing) Technology Co., Ltd. in China.