Project description
Insects as fish feed
Aquaculture can increase world fish supplies to improve food security and nutrition. It’s a sustainable way to produce healthy fish while preserving wild fish stocks. However, a major challenge is the feeding of farmed fish. Absorbing up to a third of wild-caught fish, fishmeal contributes to the depletion of fish stocks. Also, its availability is limited due to fishing quotas. On the other hand, soybean meal contains anti-nutritional factors for most farmed fish. In this context, the EU-funded IFASA 2 project will explore insect protein as an alternative solution. The project coordinator, InnovaFeed, has optimised the zootechnical model of Hermetia illucens (European endemic fly species) to achieve quality insect protein for aquaculture.
Objective
The consumption of fish protein is essential to the livelihood and well-being of billions of people worldwide, and aquaculture is a sustainable way to produce healthy fish while preserving wild fish stocks. With a 10% yearly growth over the past decade, aquaculture is one of the fastest growing sector in the food industry. Yet, sector’s expansion and sustainability are challenged by current fish feed limitations. Indeed, fishmeal and soybean meal are the two main ingredients in fish feed formulations and both hold challenges in terms of sustainability and nutritional value:
Fishmeal absorbs up to a third of wild caught fish, contributing to the depletion of fish stocks and its availability is limited due to fishing quotas with a direct impact on price (price rise from 500 euros per ton in 2004 to 1,500 euros per ton today );
Soybean meal contains anti-nutritional factors for most farmed fish and its use for aquaculture increases Europe’s protein deficit and dependency on raw material imports. Today, 80% of protein-rich crops used in Europe for animal feed, i.e. mostly soybean meal, are imported .
Fish feed manufacturers and fish farmers are seeking innovative ways to increase the nutritional value of their products while reducing the environmental impact of their supply chain. Insect protein stands out as one of the best solution to address this need and drive the development of sustainable aquaculture. Insect protein has demonstrated excellent nutritional performance with less pollutants than fishmeal (heavy metals, pesticides residues, PCBs, dioxins), restoring a natural diet for farmed fish that eat insects in the wild (e.g. salmon, trout, seabass). InnovaFeed’s insect protein is an alternative source of quality protein that will address the fish feed challenge and support the aquaculture sector’s growth.
InnovaFeed has optimized the zootechnical model of Hermetia illucens (European endemic fly species) to achieve maximum productivity and consist
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
- agricultural sciencesagriculture, forestry, and fisheriesfisheries
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesbiochemistrybiomoleculesproteins
- agricultural sciencesagriculture, forestry, and fisheriesagriculture
- natural sciencesbiological scienceszoologyentomology
- agricultural sciencesanimal and dairy sciencedomestic animalsanimal husbandryanimal feed
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Programme(s)
Call for proposal
(opens in new window) H2020-EIC-SMEInst-2018-2020
See other projects for this callSub call
H2020-SMEInst-2018-2020-2
Funding Scheme
SME-2 - SME instrument phase 2Coordinator
80190 NESLE
France
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.