Entomologist Arnold van Huis (Wageningen University, the Netherlands) is an advocate of entomophagy – the human consumption of insects. In this interview Professor Van Huis explains why farming and consuming insects might be good for humans and our planet, and the outlook for a burgeoning insect industry. Professor Van Huis is one of the co-authors of an upcoming European Parliament’s STOA study on alternative protein sources for food and feed.
Why are alternatives for meat and protein important?
Is the production of alternative proteins less polluting than meat production?
Arnold van Huis: Alternative proteins include insect-based protein, cultured meat, and plant-based alternative proteins. I specialize in insect-based protein, which has a market share of about 5-10%, mostly being used in animal feed and pet food. Producing insect-based protein would be similar to rearing free-range poultry in terms of greenhouse gas emissions.
In conventional meat production, beef is the main culprit with really an enormous environmental footprint – the equivalent amount of edible protein from beef requires ten times more land than insect protein, and about six times more water.
Is it healthy for humans to eat insect-based protein?
Arnold van Huis: Nutritionally, it’s absolutely equivalent to meat products. The extra advantage of insects is that you may have health benefits. For example, the chitin – which is the molecule in the exoskeleton of insects – seems to have beneficial effects. It stimulates the immune system because we don’t synthesise chitin, so when it enters our bodies, our immune systems are triggered. So that seems to have a positive effect not only for humans but also for animals.
For some people, allergies may be triggered, especially for those who are allergic to dust mites. Then you have to be very careful with eating insects because those are very, very closely related those animals. Clear product labelling is the solution for this.
How are insects used in animal feed now?
Arnold van Huis: It’s mostly used in pet food, so for dogs and cats, and in animal feed – for poultry and pigs. The main focus is on replacing fish meal or soy as animal feed ingredient with insects. The availability of fish meal is declining and the sustainability of soy production is also problematic.
But the biggest challenge for increasing the share of insects in feed for poultry and pigs is really the price. Already insect-based meal is comparable in price to fish meal, which is often used in animal feed. But it’s not close to the price of soybean meal, which is about 460 euros for a ton, and insect meal is now about 1,400 euros for a ton. So, there is still a long way to go.
How developed is the insect industry?
Arnold van Huis: Globally, investments in the insect industry now amounts to one billion euro annually and this is expected to triple by 2030. There are insect producers in Europe, in the United States, and in Asia. Some of the very big ones are in France – companies Ÿnsect and InnovaFeed both breed and process insects into premium ingredients: the Buffalo and Molitor mealworms for Ÿnsect and the Hermetia Illucens for InnovaFeed. Their products range from proteins for animal feed to organic fertiliser for agriculture.
In the Netherlands, the insect producer Protix raised 50 million euros in 2022 in equity for international expansion and research and development. Protix produces ingredients from insects and farms black soldier fly larvae. These insects are used in various animal feeds including for pets, fish, chickens, amongst others.
Further investments are necessary, and there’s a lot of innovation going on, with the help of companies like Buehler, which works on automation and is helping many companies to innovate in machinery and technologies and so on.
Are European consumers ready to eat insects? How can consumer reluctance be addressed?
Arnold van Huis: The first approach is to somewhat disguise the use of insects, for example by replacing soy in human food with insect-based protein. The companies producing these proteins dehydrate the insects, decontaminate them and then grind them, and then you can add this to all kinds of food products.
People don’t then necessarily relate the final food product to insects, which is a big advantage. If you look at consumer attitudes, the advice is to disguise the product or make it not recognizable to the public – except for the very adventurous people who want to see the insect. With this in mind, some years ago I along with others wrote a cookbook which was published by Columbia University Press – it’s called The Insect Cookbook.
Another way is to get some celebrity endorsement – for example, if insects were used in a popular TV cooking show like The Great British Bake-off, everyone would be asking for them! Consumer attitudes can change very quickly.
How else can scaling up the use of insect-based protein help reach environmental goals?
Arnold van Huis: Apart from those already mentioned, there is one other very big advantage and that’s mainly true for the black soldier fly, but also a little bit for the mealworms and for the crickets. You can feed them on organic byproducts, that means organic waste really. That’s a huge advantage.
Currently, it’s not allowed in the European Union to use manure, even though manure is the natural substrate for the black soldier fly. The volume of manure produced is really a problem, so if you valorise it and transform it into a high value protein products, this could be a huge opportunity. But of course it takes time to change legislation.
Insect-based protein has only been allowed for fish feed since 2017, and since 2021 for pigs and poultry. For insects as food for humans, it’s only in the last two years that a number of insect products have been allowed, and that caused a lot of uproar! But I think all this is quite promising because it shows that people now take it seriously.
In which sectors do you think it’s most likely that the next major advances will take place?
Arnold van Huis: Market penetration in animal feed is going very fast. For insects as human food, I find it extremely difficult to give predictions because it has to do with consumer attitudes and people can be very conservative if it concerns their food. But I think more and more products are coming on the market.
Ten years ago, nobody knew that you could eat insects. Now everybody knows it. When I give a presentation somewhere and ask how many people have eaten insects, then at least half of the people’s hands go up. So that is already an achievement. But what we want to achieve is not that it becomes an occasional snack, but that it is incorporated in all kind of food products and I think indeed that is going to happen. But how quickly? I find that extremely difficult to predict.