More studies needed on farming insects for food

Insects have great potential as an alternative source of protein, but further research is urgently needed before mass production begins in order to avoid environment disaster, Swedish researchers warned.

There is an “overwhelming lack of knowledge” on basic questions such as suitable species, their housing and feed requirements, managing their waste and that escaping insects do not wreak havoc on the ecosystem, they said.

Unless such issues are studied and discussed in a critical manner, “we risk creating an industry that replaces one environmental problem with another,” they wrote in the journal Trends in Ecology & Evolution.

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Unsustainable

Globally, growing demand for animal protein has led to expanded cultivation of soybeans to feed livestock and poultry, but critics say the system is unsustainable and leads to deforestation and overuse of farm chemicals.

Nutritionists and scientists have been touting insects as sustainable and cheap source of protein to feed a growing world because they are high in protein, vitamins, fibre and minerals.

Insects emit fewer greenhouse gases and less ammonia than cattle or pigs and require significantly less land and water than cattle, according to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

More than 1,900 species of insects are edible, according to the FAO. Businesses are already jumping into the sector, producing burgers made of buffalo worms, sweet potato soup made with bugs, grubs as pet food and DIY insect farms.

However, “future environmental impact of the mass rearing of insects is largely unknown,” said the Swedish scientists.

“How do you produce the feed they eat, where do you produce it, what do you use? There are so many questions,” said Asa Berggren, a conservation biologist at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and the paper’s co-author.

Biggest threats

“Are we going to use fossil fuels for heating and cooling the facilities (where insects are grown)? What about transportation?” she said to the Thomson Reuters Foundation via phone.

“One of the biggest threats to both natural systems and production systems the world over is invasive species. What happens if insects are accidentally released in a country to which they are imported? Insects are tiny and they get out,” Berggren said.

“We don’t believe it’s good enough to just switch from some species to another,” she said.

Other outstanding questions include whether reared insects who fall sick risk transmitting diseases to consumers, how their wastes are disposed of and how animal welfare should be measured in insects, the researchers said.

The bigger threats

Further research is also important, Berggren said, because “there could be a lot of insects that could be very good for us to eat but no one knows because no one has looked at that.”

Meanwhile, food shocks, or sudden losses of crops, livestock or fish, due to the combination of extreme weather conditions and geopolitical events like war, increased from 1961 to 2013, said researchers at The University of Tasmania in a report.

Researchers saw a steady increase in shock frequency over each decade with no declines.

The report, published in Nature Sustainability, said protective measures are needed to avoid future disasters.

The authors studied 226 shocks across 134 countries over the last 53 years and, unlike previous reports, examined the connection between shocks and land-based agriculture and sea-based aquaculture.

“There seems to be this increasing trend in volatility,” said lead author Richard Cottrell, a PhD candidate in quantitative marine science at the University of Tasmania in Australia.

“We do need to stop and think about this.” Extreme weather events are expected to worsen over time because of climate change, the report said, and when countries already struggling to feed their populations experience conflict, the risk of mass-hunger increases. The researchers found that about one quarter of food resources are accessed through trade, and many countries could not feed their populations without imports, making them particularly vulnerable to food shocks of trading partners.

As the frequency of shocks continues to increase, it leaves what Cottrell called “narrowing windows” between shocks, making it nearly impossible to recover and prepare for the next one.

The report said trade-dependent countries must find ways to store food in preparation for inevitable shocks elsewhere.

[Thompson Reuters Foundation]