French company Ynsect keen to replace fish and pet foods with crushed insects.

French company Ynsect keen to replace fish and pet foods with crushed insects.The current systems in place for feeding fish, pigs and poultry are not sustainable and crushed insects will be a far better alternative, according a French entrepreneur. Insect breeding specialist Ynsect has raised $50 million ($US37 million) in the last three years from private investors which it used to build and scale up its fully robotic demonstration plant in France. At the same time, the European Union's regulation of animal feed has also changed, and from July 1, 2017, feeding farmed fish insect meal will be permitted. The company hopes to expand further and supply feed to poultry, pigs and pets. "The world's population is growing, people are eating more and more fish and meat, and that means we need to produce more feed for those livestock. "Those animals eat insects as part of their natural diet, and today the commercial diets don't include them." "We are producing insect feed to provide a more natural diet." Mealworms (Tenebrio molitor) are raised from eggs to larvae, and from there they are processed into a protein meal. By-products, like oil, are also used to produce animal feed. more