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Start project ‘Insects in novel production cycles’
Recently at Wageningen Livestock Research a KennisBasis project ‘Role of insects in novel production cycles’ started. Wageningen Livestock Research, Wageningen Food Safety Research, Wageningen Food and Biobased Research, Wageningen Plant Research and Wageningen Economic Research collaborate in this project. The project focuses on the first stage of the insect production chain and investigates the potential pathways with insects for circular and climate neutral conversion of plant based materials, by-products/waste streams to produce novel proteins.
The potential of former foodstuffs and food losses or waste materials will be assessed as substrates for use in insect rearing including availability, composition, suitability, transport, costs, consumer perception, safety and sustainability. Selection of most promising substrates for conversion by insects and subsequently small scale experiments to determine development, growth and liveability of black soldier fly larvae on selected substrates will be conducted including safety aspects. Furthermore a literature review will be conducted on consumer acceptance of eating insect-based products with a focus on the importance of sustainability/circularity as behavioural determinant.