London insect farm hatches plan for greener animal feed
london: Buzzing underneath a set of railway arches in central London are hundreds of thousands of little flies, showcasing insect-farming technology that could help fight climate change.
At its research centre, eightyear-old startup Entocycle is aiming to show how the process of turning protein-rich bugs into food for chickens and pigs could be adopted on a large scale.
The flies themselves feed on almost any food waste and are better for the planet than traditional animal foods such as soy, which have a much higher carbon footprint, explains founder and chief executive Keiran Whitaker.
“We cut down rainforests to produce soy, we overfish the oceans to catch fishmeal, and then they get turned into protein feed that gets shipped all over the world again to feed the animals,” he says. “It’s incredibly unsustainable.”
Entocycle, which Whitaker expects will become profitable later this year, aims to bring an industrial-level efficiency to insect farming, designing hardware that includes precise measuring devices, robotic arms and a temperature-controlled setup for breeding insects.
With the rumble of trains overhead and the acrid scent of fly faeces hanging heavy around the office, engineers and biologists in white lab coats are preparing for a significant expansion of Entocycle’s research centre over the coming weeks.
“It is the quickest, cheapest, most sustainable insect to farm and it’s a non-disease, non-pest species found all over the world,” Whitaker says of the black soldier fly, which gets turned into packagable protein during its wriggly, worm-shaped larva phase.