The potential of insects as alternative animal protein source for livestock feeding

Abstract

The livestock industry as an important component of general agriculture is a key contributor to economic growth and development of any nation. In addition to having the capacity for earning revenue for the governments, it provides employment, food, farm energy, manure, fuel and transport. Currently, important protein ingredients for animal feed are fish meal, processed animal proteins and soybean meal. However, in the European Union the use of processed animal proteins in animal feed is prohibited due to the TSE legislation, globally land availability for soya cultivation is limited, while marine overexploitation has reduced the abundance of small pelagic forage fish from which fish meal and fish oil is derived. The growing scarcity of resources to produce these increasingly demanded ingredients has doubled prices during the last five years, while it already represents 60-70% of production costs. So, alternative (animal) protein sources for livestock and aquaculture are urgently needed.Insects are such an alternative animal protein source, which can sustainably reared on organic side streams. Reasons are that they have a favorable feed conversion efficiency, likely because they are cold-blooded. Insects contain between 30% and 70% protein on a dry matter basis. The protein content of the insect species is within the soybean/fish meal range and fat content is higher especially compared to (defatted) soybean meal. This review, however highlighted the environmental, health, livelihood and social benefits of insects. Recent efforts in feeding livestock, challenges limiting the use of insects as feed ingredients and moreover, the strategies for commercial production of insects as feed ingredients just to mention a few of the potentials of using insects for feeding livestock.