Insects as feed for livestock and fish
Insects can be used as complementary feed source for livestock. Most promising for industrial production are the larvae of soldier fly, housefly, mealworm, silkworm and grasshoppers. Feeding animals with protein sources such as meat meal, fish meal and soybean meal often represents up to 60-70% of production costs.
Another increasingly serious environmental problem of livestock is manure disposal. This manure is not immediately used as fertilizer for plants or grains. The storage and management of manure is associated with environmental problems such as soil and air pollution, space limitation and odour. To reduce storage problems, insects can be fed on the manure piles, which will reduce the level of nutrients, the amount of bulk mass and odor. Several insects can be used for these processes in different ways.
Examples
Black soldier flies
The Black Soldier Fly or Hermetia illucens is naturally present in manure piles. It occurs in extreme dense populations in different types of organic wastes including coffee bean pulp, vegetables, catsup, carrion and fish offal. The larvae of the fly is capable to reduce the microflora of the manual. This special larvae activity reduces the harmful bacteria such as Escherichia coli and Salmonella enterica. It is a natural antibitiotic treatment comparable to the cleaning of human wounds by the fly Lucilia sericata.
Maggots
The poultry industry in developing countries has grown very rapidly during the last two decades. Farmers are concerned about the availability of protein sources that can be sustainably used for feed of the cattle today and in the future. In Africa, maggots have always been part of the diet of poultry. Maggots are the larvae of the housefly Musca domestica. This housefly is widely involved in disease transmission. Therefore, before using maggots as feed, bacteriological and mycological research should be investigated.