Insects as feed: house fly or black soldier fly?

Abstract

Industrialised rearing of house flies and black soldier flies in systems for producing protein offers numerous species-specific benefits and challenges. These two dipteran species offer great potential for mass production of protein rich feed ingredients on a global scale. Through this systematic review, various facets of intensive production of these species are evaluated according to criteria, such as development time, abiotic tolerance, ease of rearing, environmental impact, safety risks, range of possible organic side streams, and their role in bioconversion.

Transfer of Lauric and Myristic Acid from Black Soldier Fly Larval Lipids to Egg Yolk Lipids of Hens Is Low

“…Insects offer a possible solution to improve the sustainability of livestock farming as they can be grown on a wide range of substrates (Smetana et al, 2019). In particular, black soldier fly larvae (BSFL), a phylogeographically remarkable representative of the family of Stratiomyidae of American origin (Ståhls et al, 2020), are considered promising as they efficiently convert food not used for consumption, animal manure, or other organic waste from side streams into a high-quality insect biomass as a basis for animal feed (Gold et al, 2018;Gold et al, 2020;van Huis et al, 2020). Regarding poultry nutrition, research on the use of BSFL so far has concentrated primarily on its fatreduced form, the protein meal, and investigations have only recently started with respect to a more wide-spread use of pure BSFL fat or full-fat larvae as feed ingredients (Maurer et al, 2016;Marono et al, 2017;Mwaniki et al, 2020;Bejaei and Cheng, 2020;Kim et al, 2020).…”

Insect pests as food and feed

“…Now it is considered a promising species in the biotransformation of organic waste and as feed for pets, fish, poultry, and pigs. The same is true for the house fly Musca domestica (Muscidae), which is considered a pest while the maggots can also be used as feed (Van Huis et al, 2020).…”

Do insects as feed ingredient affect meat quality?

“…In 2014 the first international conference on "Insects to feed the world" was organized by the FAO [13] which proposed, from the first time, the use of insects as promising alternative food and feed sources as a possible solution related to the expected demographic growth. Since that time, a new research field has emerged and an impressive number of articles have been published (see reviews of [14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29]), with an exponential increase in scientific knowledge on insects as feed.…”