Insects’ key role as food and feed

The UK has fallen well behind the rest of Europe in the development and uptake of a major new sustainable protein feedstock – insects.

Speaking at a major two-day conference on the role of insects as food and feed held this week at the Natural History Museum, lawyer Rachel O’Connor, a partner in Michelmores agricultural team, said that while European legislation had moved on considerably since Brexit, UK domestic legislation was based on retained EU law which had remained static since the transition period ended.

O’Connor said that with the exception of aquaculture, where seven insect species could be used to feed fish, any animal protein was banned from livestock feedstuffs. This had been based on legislation brought in across Europe to tackle the BSE crisis.

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But she added that a major WWF report had highlighted that the use of insect protein offered huge environmental savings by offering the possibility of reducing the requirements for imported soya in livestock diets.

She said that the EU had now provided a safe pathway to open up the wider use of insect proteins – which could be produced sustainably from waste food and other resources - in livestock feeds by allowing insect protein inclusion in both pig and poultry feedstuffs.

“And while people might ask why the legislation has moved so quickly in the EU, part of that might be due to the backlog in legislative work which had built up due to Brexit itself – but it does leave the UK at a considerable disadvantage in this market.”

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