Cricket burgers – shaking up the protein supply chain
Apple Podcasts
YouTube
Spotify
Transcript
CORDIScovery podcast- Episode #47 - Cricket burgers – shaking up the protein supply chain
This is an AI transcription.
00:00:00:00 - 00:00:37:14
Abigail Acton
This is CORDIScovery. Hello and welcome to this episode of CORDIScovery with me, Abigail Acton. Melted cheese over a burger. Is your stomach rumbling? How about making that cheese from plant protein? And maybe the burger is from a cow reared on insect based feed. Or perhaps it's made of insects themselves. A growing global population, socio demographic change, climate change.
00:00:37:18 - 00:01:02:05
Abigail Acton
There's an increased pressure on the world's resources to provide not only more, but different types of food. We need to develop ways to produce more existing sources of protein more efficiently. Animal based protein has an important role to play as part of a sustainable diet and as a contributor to food security. But now is the time for alternative sources for direct human consumption and animal feed to increase their market share.
00:01:02:07 - 00:01:26:21
Abigail Acton
So in this episode, we're going to be looking at how to increase the production and market uptake of complementary proteins, plant based, insect and other sources. We're considering safety marketing challenges and cutting edge approaches to rearing. Caramelized, crispy grasshoppers, anyone? Listen on! Talking us through the twists and turns of getting such innovative products onto a very traditional market.
00:01:26:23 - 00:01:50:13
Abigail Acton
Our three researchers, all of whom have received support from EU funding. Emanuele Zannini has a PhD in Applied Biomolecular Science and is now a senior research coordinator at the School of Food and Nutritional Sciences, University College Cork. He is particularly interested in developing plant based food options to reduce the emissions related to animal rearing and farming. Welcome, Emanuele.
00:01:50:18 - 00:01:53:13
Emanuele Zannini
Hello everybody, and thanks for the invitation.
00:01:53:16 - 00:02:13:00
Abigail Acton
Tuen Veldkamp is a senior researcher in animal nutrition at Wageningen University and Research (WUR) and specialized in insects. He's especially interested in testing and demonstrating innovative rearing methods to help the development of a smoothly functioning, commercially viable European insect supply chain. Welcome Tuen.
00:02:13:02 - 00:02:15:14
Tuen Veldkamp
Thank you very much for inviting me and happy to be here.
00:02:15:20 - 00:02:32:04
Abigail Acton
Super. Erlend Sild is the founder of the deep-tech company BugBox, which has developed an industrial and scalable technology for sustainable protein production from crickets, providing competitive production costs and increasing efficiency using AI. Welcome, Erlend.
00:02:32:10 - 00:02:33:21
Erlend Sild
Hello, everyone.
00:02:33:23 - 00:02:55:02
Abigail Acton
Emanuele, I'm going to turn to you first. SMART PROTEIN aimed to industrially validate and demonstrate how EU produced protein rich plants and microbial biomass proteins from things like edible fungi can be used to complement traditional sources. So what do you feel is one of the key reasons that the public is being a little slow to embrace alternative protein sources?
00:02:55:08 - 00:03:19:22
Emanuele Zannini
Well, definitely the lack of a sensory attribute of the plant based products. This is because we are unable to mimic, the same food experience that consumers is expecting by consuming, parmesan steaks or salmon filets and this is a critical access to make sure that basically, the consumers we really embrace and include more, alternative products in their diets, right.
00:03:20:03 - 00:03:29:13
Abigail Acton
And so did the project consider some some means of actually improving the sensory experience of of plant based foods. When you were looking at how to do that?
00:03:29:17 - 00:03:46:05
Emanuele Zannini
Absolutely. I mean, the project actually did much more because, one aspect is to secure that the product is tastes good, looks good, smells good. Also, able to provide the same, let's say biting experience. Chewing experience.
00:03:46:10 - 00:03:47:22
Abigail Acton
Mouthfeel. I think it's called.
00:03:47:23 - 00:04:16:22
Emanuele Zannini
Yes, absolutely. And also the, the same, flavor evolution while you actually need the products, you know, and, besides these also we are working in a more systemic approach. So, securing where those raw materials coming from. So interacting with farmers, understanding also their needs, how we can actually combine their needs and also the needs to produce more plant protein, particularly from legumes.
00:04:16:23 - 00:04:36:20
Emanuele Zannini
Also were discussing with with the food court, the food industry in particular ingredients company and producers, also making sure that the products that we were developing are much healthier and nutritious than regular counterpart, because that's also the the one of the key acts that that basically the meat lovers pointed out.
00:04:37:01 - 00:04:43:06
Abigail Acton
Yes, indeed. You're absolutely right. Can you give me some ideas of what sources you were looking at? So what are we talking about being used here?
00:04:43:12 - 00:05:04:06
Emanuele Zannini
Well, basically we are using different, legumes protein, like, chickpeas and lentils. Also we're introducing European quinoa productions. But besides this also we were trying to, let's say, in the Second Life or size streams in particular, coming from pasta producer, from bread crust and also from doing side streams.
00:05:04:08 - 00:05:06:02
Abigail Acton
And how did you go about doing that?
00:05:06:05 - 00:05:34:05
Emanuele Zannini
Oh, very fantastic, because actually well, we were basically trying to improve the nutritional property and also the biological value by, fermenting those side streams with increased fungi. The fungus, when you're using your heavy, you know, when you are a consuming convert or when you are using, when you are consuming tempeh, for example, using those fungi, we were actually able to improve the nitrogen content.
00:05:34:05 - 00:05:43:04
Emanuele Zannini
So the protein content and also reducing some of the natural genes that the normal you find when you are consuming plant based, products.
00:05:43:04 - 00:05:46:09
Abigail Acton
So when we say side streams, where where were these materials coming from?
00:05:46:11 - 00:06:13:05
Emanuele Zannini
Well, it was coming from, pasta industry. Pasta leftover or bread company producing let's say, sandwich bread. So basically the bread crust was actually removed and but, you know, they're still containing high quality nutrients. They basically could be securily, you know, upcycled. So and to find a second life and being introduced in the food system was very important.
00:06:13:06 - 00:06:28:24
Abigail Acton
So yeah I know it is important. So this is great because you're cutting down waste and you're finding a kind of more efficient way of producing food. But I'm a little confused about the notion of what you do next. So you've got your carbohydrate sources. You're encouraging the growth of these food grade fungus, the sort that we have already on common.
00:06:29:01 - 00:06:33:00
Abigail Acton
We're consuming happily already. And then what do you do with these fungi as well?
00:06:33:00 - 00:06:55:18
Emanuele Zannini
Then at the end, we are not separating fungi with size streams all come together and then we are producing ingredients. Okay. And then will be introduced, will be functional. I mean, so in making sure the basically the proteins stretch and mimic the, let's say the corridor or mimic the, the, the, the meat structure in the developing or reconstructing the the end products.
00:06:55:20 - 00:07:03:20
Abigail Acton
Okay. Great. So the food material, these foods are then adapted and processed to become substitutes.
00:07:03:20 - 00:07:04:09
Abigail Acton
For.
00:07:04:12 - 00:07:05:16
Abigail Acton
Meat based industries.
00:07:05:22 - 00:07:13:05
Emanuele Zannini
Yeah, absolutely. For the meat industry also, for example, one of the fungi will actually providing very garlic flavor.
00:07:13:05 - 00:07:13:17
Abigail Acton
Oh, great.
00:07:13:17 - 00:07:16:17
Emanuele Zannini
So what we are actually using for meatballs analogs.
00:07:16:18 - 00:07:34:02
Abigail Acton
Oh right. Excellent. So in fact it also has an added ingredient. So it's like literally a complete protein part part meat. The part not meat. Right. And very interesting. Thank you. I know you said something about trying to, you know, talk with farmers trying to bridge the gap between the production and the marketing and so on. Did you did you yourself go out and talk with anybody?
00:07:34:02 - 00:07:37:05
Abigail Acton
Who did you have experience with them meeting anybody or talking to anybody?
00:07:37:06 - 00:07:38:01
Emanuele Zannini
Oh, definitely.
00:07:38:04 - 00:07:41:14
Abigail Acton
Come on, tell us some stories. How did it go? Well, people open to these ideas.
00:07:41:15 - 00:08:17:12
Emanuele Zannini
Well, it was very, let's say, inspiring because, most of the times you know, underestimate, which are the challenges they are facing, you know, because they are, dealing with, with several trends, you know, with environment, with, climate change, with the cost of their products they are using. So, and, it was very interesting to see basically how we could actually support them in diversifying the business model, you know, because most of the time they were producing wheat, wheat, or sunflower oil.
00:08:17:14 - 00:08:37:15
Emanuele Zannini
And we actually introduced that the legumes as well to improve the crop rotation, to improve the soil fertility. Indeed. Actually, the the farmers, that were included in our study, they were actually implementing regenerative agriculture farming. So basically to be able to produce more, better, but requesting less from the soil.
00:08:37:17 - 00:08:50:03
Abigail Acton
Fantastic. So in fact, there's also an environmental impact, right? At the very initial stage of this and the actual growth patterns, there's an a positive environmental impact, but the environment benefits from a greater crop rotation. And as you say, less demands on the soil.
00:08:50:05 - 00:09:12:01
Emanuele Zannini
Yes, actually was very important for us to make sure and to prove that what we were doing was sustainable from an environmental perspective, from, also economic perspective, because the food industry was actually pointed out how costly will be. Now, if we want to industrialize these products. So we did the business analysis to make sure that that's what we were promising.
00:09:12:01 - 00:09:32:05
Emanuele Zannini
It was very convincing and also, basically able to reduce the time to market that basically normally companies are struggling with. So definitely, you know, it was a team effort and the things I think I'm very proud of it that, we just remove the silo thinking approach.
00:09:32:07 - 00:09:36:05
Abigail Acton
When you say the silo thinking approach, what are you talking about? And how is it better now?
00:09:36:07 - 00:09:50:20
Emanuele Zannini
Well, basically, you know, the food industry doesn't think what is the best for just for them, but what is the best the intrinsic approach. So understanding that, if if we are performing something that is better for everybody is also better for myself.
00:09:50:22 - 00:09:53:10
Abigail Acton
Great. And also I presume communication channels are.
00:09:53:10 - 00:09:53:22
Emanuele Zannini
Absolutely.
00:09:53:24 - 00:10:11:08
Abigail Acton
So easier for farmers to talk to the people further down the line for the production and so on and so on. Yes. Can you give us an example of I mean, it was fantastic listening to you talking about the edible fungi. Can you give us some examples now of what you mean? For example, if I think of chickpeas, what can be done with chickpeas in a way that I hadn't thought of before.
00:10:11:10 - 00:10:36:01
Emanuele Zannini
But with the chickpeas, actually, we can be better actually able to produce, a semi-hard cheese, like, because basically we are actually using the starch content to actually produce a proper, a proper structure in neurology. And also chickpeas also has a good fat content. And also we know in the cheese how add component is very important to provide, you know, a unique flavor and unique ripening.
00:10:36:01 - 00:10:45:00
Emanuele Zannini
And actually we were actually able to mimic, you know, this flavor revolutions also using specific fungi and also edible fungi and lactic acid bacteria.
00:10:45:03 - 00:10:54:20
Abigail Acton
I mean I think this is wonderful and I would love to try some of this. Is it available on supermarket shelves or shop shelves near me, or is this still something that's a sort of prototype concept?
00:10:54:22 - 00:11:03:15
Emanuele Zannini
Well, the project basically was supporting the company at reaching the Pre-Commercial stage, so now it's up to the company to, let's say to.
00:11:03:17 - 00:11:04:05
Abigail Acton
To actually.
00:11:04:05 - 00:11:09:11
Emanuele Zannini
Market. Yes, to move on the founder and to let's say, did do the say the last mile.
00:11:09:11 - 00:11:12:13
Abigail Acton
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You've enabled them and facilitated them to get this far.
00:11:12:15 - 00:11:23:16
Emanuele Zannini
But that was the main goal of this, the of this project to support them, to provide knowledge, to provide strategies and to, let's say, succeed in bringing those products to the markets.
00:11:23:18 - 00:11:27:09
Abigail Acton
Thank you so much. Does anyone have any questions? Yeah. Tuen.
00:11:27:11 - 00:11:51:01
Tuen Veldkamp
Yeah. the Europeans are now actively, reducing their meat consumption for a variety of reasons. So we're including health environmental or animal welfare, factors. Another EU project is also focusing on the, the dietary shift could you elaborate what the what the EU could do to support this shift? Can you you can think of labeling, marketing, standards.
00:11:51:06 - 00:12:21:19
Emanuele Zannini
One thing I think is, actually is important. And actually we broke down in our, in our policy brief that we, we provide to the EU it was public food procurement because I mean we are at the EU is actually feeding over 70 million of students. And definitely this is really could be a good starting point in using public money to, let's say, educate a young generation and how we should interact in a better way with what we are eating in our plate.
00:12:21:21 - 00:12:48:12
Abigail Acton
Well, that's fantastic, because then you, as you say, you're reaching them young and opening minds to innovative concepts, which might be quite difficult to do with them with some sectors of the public. Excellent. Thank you very much. Good question, Tuen. In fact, I'm going to turn to you now. So SUStainable INsect CHAIN wanted to contribute to novel protein provision for feed and food in Europe by overcoming the remaining barriers for increasing the economic viability of the insect value chain and opening up markets.
00:12:48:17 - 00:12:58:09
Abigail Acton
So if we now turn to insects as a potential source of food and animal feed, what is the benefit of using them? Please Tuen why are we going to do this?
00:12:58:11 - 00:13:14:22
Tuen Veldkamp
Yeah. That's interesting. I consider insects as the most promising, alternative source of protein available in Europe to to enter the feeder food market. Insects contribute to the sustainability of the food chain, as they are, in my opinion, the missing link that can close the product life cycle loops.
00:13:14:22 - 00:13:18:04
Abigail Acton
What do you mean by closing product life cycle loops?
00:13:18:06 - 00:13:32:13
Tuen Veldkamp
If you are looking into the food chain, a lot of bio waste is lost. Cannot be used in the food chain. And by use of, insects, you can reuse this bio waste to grow the insects and use the insects again into the food chain.
00:13:32:15 - 00:13:38:08
Abigail Acton
Right? Yeah. No. That's excellent obviously. And so what insects can be raised and and in which way can they be used.
00:13:38:10 - 00:13:51:15
Tuen Veldkamp
Yeah. The different insects can be raised. For example, black shoulder fly. And another species is a mealworm which can be used for animal feed, for they are most used for animal feed.
00:13:51:17 - 00:13:54:11
Abigail Acton
I use them to feed my black birds in the garden. Yes.
00:13:54:22 - 00:14:13:02
Tuen Veldkamp
Yeah they are and are really also used in in private gardens etc.. But mealworms also can be used for human, food, like, crickets and grasshoppers. So it's, there's a little bit of shift, between the different species for use in human food or in animal feed.
00:14:13:06 - 00:14:24:19
Abigail Acton
Okay. This is wonderful. Thank you very much. Okay. It seems logical, very logical. But can can you tell us what's holding us back? Because I get the sense that this is not as widespread on our shelves as it could be. What's holding us back?
00:14:24:21 - 00:14:51:15
Tuen Veldkamp
Yeah. Recurrently. What's holding us back is, that the insects can only be fed with remainders from vegetal origin, which are currently also allowed to feed directly to pig and poultry. And this is because of safety issues. So only certified substrates can be used to grow the insects. And this is really hampering further development. So a lot of studies are currently ongoing.
00:14:51:21 - 00:15:02:23
Tuen Veldkamp
To test the safety of novel, substrates, which you can use to grow the insects. Okay. And with substrates, I mean, the difference bio waste sources in combination.
00:15:03:00 - 00:15:21:04
Abigail Acton
Super. Okay. So one thing that's a bit of a bottleneck to the furthering of this is the manner in which the insects are reared, the food upon which they're reared. But what about public acceptance of this concept? Did your project work at all on identifying where the public is on this idea?
00:15:21:06 - 00:15:45:23
Tuen Veldkamp
Yeah, we for the, applications in human food, we also, tested, consumer preferences, for different types of products. In the project six different insect products were developed, and they were also subjected to consumer panels, for testing these for tastiness, for, but also the acceptance, in mind because, insects are quite different.
00:15:46:00 - 00:16:03:14
Tuen Veldkamp
On the menu, in, in European areas, I can say in Asia it's quite common to eat insects. Therefore, really in this project we decided to include insect ingredients so the protein and oil fractions into our regular, dinner meals.
00:16:03:14 - 00:16:21:17
Abigail Acton
So that's quite interesting. That's a little bit like the edible yeasts being added to increase flavor and things. So we really are talking complementary proteins here. So products produced from insect rearing going into meat products or going give me some idea of the products that you were actually creating here. I'm trying to guess it. Just tell me.
00:16:21:21 - 00:16:48:16
Tuen Veldkamp
Yeah, you can think of, for example, a branch, you can use insects, as an ingredient in bread, in falafel, in, pasta. So these are some examples. We we also produce meatballs, as an alternative, for, for meat consumption. So this is, really new developments by which we should have tried to increase the acceptability of insect products, on the European dish.
00:16:48:22 - 00:16:53:00
Abigail Acton
And what was the reaction of your panel? How did that go? How did the testing process go?
00:16:53:04 - 00:17:23:14
Tuen Veldkamp
Yeah. The response of the consumers, it was quite, good and, above our expectations. So if you, include the products in the dinners, then, it's, it went fine. And also we tested, the acceptability for insect fats, animal products, because this is another element which we studied in the project. And yeah, for Europe, we think, both are, well accepted by European consumers.
00:17:23:16 - 00:17:36:09
Abigail Acton
Super. Excellent. Let's talk about animal feed because that is indeed another pathway. Can you tell me a little bit about what the benefit of using insects as a basis for animal feed would be, for example, to the environment? Well, what does that save? How does that help?
00:17:36:12 - 00:18:14:09
Tuen Veldkamp
Yeah, the main focus of using insects in animal feed is to try to make your diet composition more regional. So not, importing for example, soybeans from Latin American or fishmeal. There is a big discussion on overfishing of oceans. So if you can exchange these traditional sources in animal feed by, insect, products. Yeah, then you will have a lot of benefits, on, sustainability, for example, for the environment, insects that can be reached, on bio waste sources.
00:18:14:09 - 00:18:30:19
Tuen Veldkamp
And as I already told, this is, a real circular element. You can close, the cycles. And so by this. Yeah, you can really have benefits, into animal feed, making the circle, complete, bringing it back into the food chain.
00:18:30:24 - 00:18:48:07
Abigail Acton
Yeah. No. That's wonderful. So it's sourced locally. It's using waste streams that otherwise, maybe would be disposed of in a way that's perhaps less environmentally friendly. Yeah. No, it's a great idea. Okay. Superb. So can I just ask you now? I know it's not the only way we've been talking about animal feed and and human food. It's not the only way insects could be used.
00:18:48:07 - 00:18:54:14
Abigail Acton
So can you think if we were to look into the future, how else could the product of insect rearing be used?
00:18:54:16 - 00:19:08:15
Tuen Veldkamp
Yeah, insects can also be used and that's what we currently see in Asia, insects can be used also for technical, applications. And then you can think of use for, transportation fuel.
00:19:08:16 - 00:19:09:12
Abigail Acton
Biofuel.
00:19:09:15 - 00:19:33:14
Tuen Veldkamp
Yeah. Biofuel. It's, the, the lipids of the black solar fly. It's really, good energy source also for a biofuel, but it's, a little bit lower into the cascade. So we really prefer to use the highly nutritious insect oil for animal feed or for human food, of course. And, yeah. So, it's it's an alternative.
00:19:33:14 - 00:19:45:00
Tuen Veldkamp
And what we see, outside of Europe, that insects are also used for biodiesel production if they are fed with substrates that are not completely safe.
00:19:45:02 - 00:19:49:07
Abigail Acton
Oh, I see, that's great. So when they can't go into any other stream, then why not use them as fuel?
00:19:49:13 - 00:20:02:01
Tuen Veldkamp
Then? You are really, see the insects as a kind of processing, step to make. Yeah. Not that safe substrates usable for example, as an energy source.
00:20:02:01 - 00:20:21:19
Abigail Acton
Tuen did your project do anything at all about welfare. I mean, what do we actually doing when we come to think about. Because, you know, we're getting constantly informed about just how sentient the animals that we're already, farming are. We don't want any horrible surprises down the line about just just what the crickets are perceiving around them. So what's happening about animal welfare standards?
00:20:21:21 - 00:20:50:20
Tuen Veldkamp
Yeah, animal welfare was not involved in the project as a research topic, but recently, yeah, insect welfare is very important, as we see also in all the right livestock sector. If you think of pigs and poultry, etc.. So, we are, now developing different projects, on animal welfare because first we have to set the tools how to measure welfare of insects.
00:20:50:22 - 00:21:05:10
Tuen Veldkamp
So it's more easy to measure welfare, we think, in pigs and poultry, than in insect larvae, for example. So the tools have to be developed and therefore we would like to start new projects very soon.
00:21:05:12 - 00:21:11:23
Abigail Acton
Right. Excellent. Thank you so much. That was very, very well explained. Much appreciated. Does anyone have any observations or comments to make to Tuen?
00:21:12:00 - 00:21:13:08
Emanuele Zannini
I have a question actually.
00:21:13:09 - 00:21:14:00
Abigail Acton
Emmanuel.
00:21:14:02 - 00:21:42:14
Emanuele Zannini
Yes. I was wondering, our mostly time consuming constraints are influenced also by the political positions. So I was wondering because in Italy, now there are very strong debates, you know, and, I can see that most of the time politicians are heavily influencing, you know, the consumer perspective towards a specific topic like this one. So I was wondering if you could comment or if you have a feel the same experience.
00:21:42:16 - 00:22:14:05
Tuen Veldkamp
Yeah. We know it's really also, country dependent. And for me, it's it's clear Italy has with respect to other European countries, quite, strong, culture on food. And so you have your own, in Italy, your own preferences. So I think, we, we, we really need this is for the insect project. And I think also for your project, really important to focus on the perception in each country.
00:22:14:05 - 00:22:27:19
Tuen Veldkamp
And, we have also seen in our project we have quite differences between, for example, Germany or France or Italy. So it's quite important that we choose the right options to go into the markets.
00:22:27:21 - 00:22:52:22
Abigail Acton
Yeah. Adopt the process depending on the cultural expectations. Yeah, I know that's wonderful. Well, Erlend can probably tell us a little bit about that too, because Erlend was responsible for something called BugBox, the bugbox project. Initially it created software to run a fully automated mass insect rearing reactor. This new technology, which is easily scalable, targets the farmers of edible insects to make farming safer, more efficient and more cost effective.
00:22:53:01 - 00:23:07:12
Abigail Acton
So talking about cultural acceptance from country to country as Tuen did very, very interestingly. Can I ask you Erlend , you got involved in this because you traveled a lot, in different countries around the world. What did the traveling show you? What did you learn from that?
00:23:07:14 - 00:23:33:04
Erlend Sild
Yeah. That's true. My previous background is actually from shipping industry, and there was I was really traveling a lot, especially in Southeast Asia and Africa and different countries around the world. And what I noticed was that the high nutritional food is very unevenly distributed in the world. Right? It's not. So it's a few deficit, but, but unevenly.
00:23:33:06 - 00:23:44:20
Erlend Sild
And then started to look how we could produce some, some alternative ways, more sustainable way, high nutritional food. So and I finished, and finished in the insect industry.
00:23:44:22 - 00:23:59:08
Abigail Acton
Right. You moved from being a seafarer to working out, how to make insect farming, effective, which is an interesting jump. Did you. I mean, I presume you saw the acceptability with which cultures around the world consume insects without thinking about it.
00:23:59:10 - 00:24:35:23
Erlend Sild
That's true. There is statistics which says that, currently over 2 billion people are consuming or having insects as a part of the diet, their daily ratios. But my decision was purely mathematical basis of business based, considering not just even the growth of the global population, but the growth of the GDP, which is a mainly it's coming from Southeast Asia, where people are starting living better, they want to eat better, they want to order ready foods, dining outside, taking more pets.
00:24:36:03 - 00:25:04:02
Erlend Sild
They need all proteins and reversing those estimated values or, or estimations in, in the monetary base into the tonnes. How much proteins we actually missing on the market by 2030? That was a pure calculation. So, we cannot produce it by on a traditional way. We need to find some some more, sustainable ways to produce, animal proteins.
00:25:04:05 - 00:25:16:20
Abigail Acton
Tell us a little bit about what you actually did within the project bugbox, because we've been talking about encouraging uptake for human and animal feed. So what was the gap that bugbox tried to resolve? And how did it go about doing so?
00:25:16:22 - 00:25:41:04
Erlend Sild
Yes. The main gap was this is on the field, actually on the complementary proteins is the widespread enthusiasm and the actually the production efficiency. So you can be successful or trade on the market with complementary or sustainable proteins when your unit economics doesn't work, you can't just be 3 or 5 times more expensive on the market and expect that you will succeed.
00:25:41:09 - 00:25:53:08
Erlend Sild
It doesn't matter which, which kind of, positive psychological effect to you provide. So unit economics should be the basic, and that's, that's a main gap BugBox is solving.
00:25:53:13 - 00:26:06:17
Abigail Acton
So really we're talking about here when you say unit economics, it gets you really it's cost efficiency basically. Right. So if the only way that you can produce them is, is not on scale, then the price of the product is very expensive. And who's going to want to buy that I get it okay. So can you tell me a little bit more.
00:26:06:18 - 00:26:13:12
Abigail Acton
What BugBox actually set out to do then to resolve this gap between the enthusiasm to actually consume this, but the, the difficulty in production.
00:26:13:14 - 00:26:35:06
Erlend Sild
True, you need to just look into the production ways and what are the main costs. And as Tuen mentioned already, it is very much one of the highest components is a feed. How can you optimize the feed price? Because, feed is almost a 30% of the total costs when you farm. And if you don't control the feed, you don't control your costs.
00:26:35:06 - 00:26:56:00
Erlend Sild
And you are not efficient and competitive. And the feed is crucial as well, because, the food security or, let's say safety starts from the feed because that's why that's it's a main reason why we're talking about the insects is a conversion rate issue. For example, have a ten kilos of the feed, how much do you get in return?
00:26:56:05 - 00:27:20:12
Erlend Sild
In these metrics Insects are just, just number one. So none of the existing species cannot beat the, insects in this ratio. And another thing which is happening is that people are afraid that with a novel food, they are going to lose the traditional way, how the family is gathering or the spread of the evening for a family dinner.
00:27:20:13 - 00:27:42:12
Erlend Sild
Some kind of insects are coming, or plant based things. Where is our steak? Where is our lamp? Where is our traditional food? But it's not going to happen. It will remain, but we just add some new ingredients to live in a more sustainable way. But if we can eliminate that fear, I think we will eliminate resistance as well.
00:27:42:14 - 00:27:49:00
Abigail Acton
Perfect. Perfect . Erlend, in the bugbox project, what did you actually achieve? What? What did you create?
00:27:49:02 - 00:28:17:02
Erlend Sild
Yeah, we created fully automated and autonomous rearing environment. We call it rearing reactor, which basically gives us, efficiency in the rearing phase. And we also developed, software, which actually controls totally all the processes, starting from rearing up to the processing, packaging. And that’s our IP basically what we can, what we can say that we achieved during this project.
00:28:17:04 - 00:28:26:07
Abigail Acton
Oh that's fantastic. Okay. So was it a prototype? I mean, how many insects did you manage to rear using this facility? How big did you manage to make this?
00:28:26:07 - 00:28:48:06
Erlend Sild
Yeah, main KPIs for us has been always being the square meter productivity and the cubic meter productivity. What is the production efficiency of the one cubic meter of the rearing box, let's say. And what is a square meter productivity of your total investment. What are we investing into the facility. So we achieved, really good results.
00:28:48:07 - 00:28:58:15
Erlend Sild
And we can say that, we most probably are the most effective and efficient, production technology provider in the global wise at the moment.
00:28:58:17 - 00:29:09:05
Abigail Acton
Okay. And so, I mean, I know that one of the problems facing producers are, are pathogens, how did your product actually help to reduce the influence of pathogens to reduce pathogen presence?
00:29:09:09 - 00:29:39:04
Erlend Sild
Yes. This is a risk that need to be mitigated because pathogens are airborne and widely spread it everywhere. And we solved this issue by closing this rearing environment because we control basically not only what happens inside the rearing reactor, but also in the room where the rearing reactors are located. So in a double, the air is clean, it's totally clean and sterilized, it's overpressured and so on.
00:29:39:06 - 00:29:47:23
Erlend Sild
It is, risk which need to be mitigated because when you invest some millions, you don't want to lose it because of the poor risk mitigation.
00:29:47:23 - 00:29:56:10
Abigail Acton
And, and so pathogens really can cause that sort of loss. I mean, can't you just go in and clean a facility up if you, if you find that there's something that's, impacting on your insects?
00:29:56:12 - 00:30:01:18
Erlend Sild
No, you you need a more, deeper. No. You can't.
00:30:01:20 - 00:30:08:22
Abigail Acton
There we go. That’s a that’s straightforward. So what happens then? You invest millions, you try to grow your insects, something comes in that is killing them, what do you have to do?
00:30:08:24 - 00:30:11:06
Erlend Sild
You need to build another facility, right?
00:30:11:09 - 00:30:13:00
Abigail Acton
You have to shut the whole thing down , do you?
00:30:13:02 - 00:30:13:18
Erlend Sild
Yes.
00:30:14:10 - 00:30:49:11
Erlend Sild
Or you can rear another species which are immune of the pathogens. They just carry them, but they don't die, and you still can operate and to produce. But in EU, it's strictly regulated. Which species you can rear for human consumption. And, those other species might not apply for such regulation. So it is you can you can still export your production to Asia or some other countries, but but yes, that's, that's a huge risks, not huge, but let's say smart.
00:30:49:11 - 00:30:52:20
Erlend Sild
You need to be considering. Yeah. Think smart.
00:30:52:20 - 00:31:06:13
Abigail Acton
You need, you need to take steps before it becomes an issue. Super. Okay, so what's your what's your company doing now? What's bugbox up to now because you developed this mass rearing system with the software. My understanding now is that you're getting quite involved in AI. How are we using AI and how what are you up to now?
00:31:06:15 - 00:31:40:05
Erlend Sild
Yes, now we are interface, where we are starting to sell, our technology worldwide. We have, preorders, let's say offtake agreements more than value in €20 million already in different places in, in Singapore, in Australia, in Europe also. And that gives us an opportunity to collect more data that, analyzing the different farms, different locations around the globe gives us enough data to put into our systems, and algorithms can work on that.
00:31:40:05 - 00:31:45:15
Erlend Sild
How to constantly improve and make the production processes more efficiently.
00:31:45:18 - 00:31:50:07
Abigail Acton
Okay, so what is that increasing data tell you, and how does it help you to train your AI?
00:31:50:09 - 00:32:19:21
Erlend Sild
If you have a farm with a thousand rearing reactors in one location and, thousand rearing reactors in another location, you can actually put those 1000 to operate in a little bit different conditions. Then another thousand and you can get the result. And if you can reduce, for example, let's say pure example, rearing temperature let's say less than one degree or 0.5 degrees.
00:32:19:23 - 00:32:45:11
Erlend Sild
It actually gives you operational cost savings already if you have a similar results with other reactors. But doing those analyzes based on ten reactors and ten reactors, then you get some correlations, which not might be true. So you need the bigger volume than that, to analyze and repeat that research or analysis.
00:32:45:17 - 00:32:54:16
Abigail Acton
Okay. That's great. So super. That explains it very nicely. Thank you. Thanks for the example. Well that was excellent. Thanks. So and so does anyone have any questions or comments to make to Erlend please. Yeah, Tuen.
00:32:54:16 - 00:33:18:16
Tuen Veldkamp
Yes it’s very interesting to to hear about the system. You you ship the system to, to grow crickets and grasshoppers. So it's based on, dry feet and as you know, for black soldier fly and there is 30% dry matter in the feed. So that's really a wet, substrate issue or equipment suitable to grow also black soldier fly?
00:33:18:18 - 00:33:50:09
Emanuele Zannini
No. Our technology is purely, adopted and created for autochthonous species. So dry feed and the six legged. Yeah. And, why we chose that? Because first we had the knowledge, one of our founders is, young biologist in that field. Very highly recommend textbook. And another one, that that gives this species opportunity to our clients to trade on the both markets, on the feed and the food.
00:33:50:11 - 00:34:12:00
Emanuele Zannini
Yeah. If your unit economics allow you to trade on the feed market as well. So which, black black soldier flies don't follow but the like, by the way, you black soldier approach very much because taking out the bio waste and making another valuable commodity on the food chain that's, just that's what we actually need.
00:34:12:02 - 00:34:13:08
Emanuele Zannini
So. Yeah.
00:34:13:10 - 00:34:14:17
Tuen Veldkamp
Thank you, very clear.
00:34:14:19 - 00:34:34:14
Abigail Acton
Perfect. Excellent, excellent. Well, listen, I just want to thank you all for sharing your ideas and your time with us today. I think it was just really fascinating. And I like the fact that you're all coming at this from slightly different angles. And I look forward to some of these products being available for me to buy. Thanks to your work and the work of others like you.
00:34:34:16 - 00:34:36:10
Abigail Acton
Very very good, good bye.
00:34:36:12 - 00:34:40:14
ALL
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
00:34:40:16 - 00:35:02:16
Abigail Acton
If you've enjoyed this episode, follow us on Spotify and Apple and check out the podcast homepage on the CORDIS website. Subscribe to make sure the hottest research in the EU funded science programs isn't passing you by. And if you're enjoying listening, why not spread the word from the latest innovations in batteries to involving more women in science? In our last 46 episodes, they'll be something
00:35:02:20 - 00:35:28:12
Abigail Acton
To tweak your curiosity. Perhaps you want to know what other EU funded projects are doing to make the use of complementary proteins more scalable? The CORDIS website will give you an insight into the results of projects funded by Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe that are working in this area. The website has articles and interviews that explore the results of research being conducted in a very broad range of domains and subjects, from pulses to pulsars.
00:35:28:14 - 00:35:48:05
Abigail Acton
There's something there for you. Maybe you're involved in a project or would like to apply for funding. Take a look at what others are doing in your domain. So come and check out the research that's revealing what makes our world tick. We're always happy to hear from you! Drop us a line editorial@cordis.europa.eu. Until next time.
00:35:48:07 - 00:35:51:21
Abigail Acton
This is an AI transcription.
00:00:00:00 - 00:00:37:14
Abigail Acton
This is CORDIScovery. Hello and welcome to this episode of CORDIScovery with me, Abigail Acton. Melted cheese over a burger. Is your stomach rumbling? How about making that cheese from plant protein? And maybe the burger is from a cow reared on insect based feed. Or perhaps it's made of insects themselves. A growing global population, socio demographic change, climate change.
00:00:37:18 - 00:01:02:05
Abigail Acton
There's an increased pressure on the world's resources to provide not only more, but different types of food. We need to develop ways to produce more existing sources of protein more efficiently. Animal based protein has an important role to play as part of a sustainable diet and as a contributor to food security. But now is the time for alternative sources for direct human consumption and animal feed to increase their market share.
00:01:02:07 - 00:01:26:21
Abigail Acton
So in this episode, we're going to be looking at how to increase the production and market uptake of complementary proteins, plant based, insect and other sources. We're considering safety marketing challenges and cutting edge approaches to rearing. Caramelized, crispy grasshoppers, anyone? Listen on! Talking us through the twists and turns of getting such innovative products onto a very traditional market.
00:01:26:23 - 00:01:50:13
Abigail Acton
Our three researchers, all of whom have received support from EU funding. Emanuele Zannini has a PhD in Applied Biomolecular Science and is now a senior research coordinator at the School of Food and Nutritional Sciences, University College Cork. He is particularly interested in developing plant based food options to reduce the emissions related to animal rearing and farming. Welcome, Emanuele.
00:01:50:18 - 00:01:53:13
Emanuele Zannini
Hello everybody, and thanks for the invitation.
00:01:53:16 - 00:02:13:00
Abigail Acton
Tuen Veldkamp is a senior researcher in animal nutrition at Wageningen University and Research (WUR) and specialized in insects. He's especially interested in testing and demonstrating innovative rearing methods to help the development of a smoothly functioning, commercially viable European insect supply chain. Welcome Tuen.
00:02:13:02 - 00:02:15:14
Tuen Veldkamp
Thank you very much for inviting me and happy to be here.
00:02:15:20 - 00:02:32:04
Abigail Acton
Super. Erlend Sild is the founder of the deep-tech company BugBox, which has developed an industrial and scalable technology for sustainable protein production from crickets, providing competitive production costs and increasing efficiency using AI. Welcome, Erlend.
00:02:32:10 - 00:02:33:21
Erlend Sild
Hello, everyone.
00:02:33:23 - 00:02:55:02
Abigail Acton
Emanuele, I'm going to turn to you first. SMART PROTEIN aimed to industrially validate and demonstrate how EU produced protein rich plants and microbial biomass proteins from things like edible fungi can be used to complement traditional sources. So what do you feel is one of the key reasons that the public is being a little slow to embrace alternative protein sources?
00:02:55:08 - 00:03:19:22
Emanuele Zannini
Well, definitely the lack of a sensory attribute of the plant based products. This is because we are unable to mimic, the same food experience that consumers is expecting by consuming, parmesan steaks or salmon filets and this is a critical access to make sure that basically, the consumers we really embrace and include more, alternative products in their diets, right.
00:03:20:03 - 00:03:29:13
Abigail Acton
And so did the project consider some some means of actually improving the sensory experience of of plant based foods. When you were looking at how to do that?
00:03:29:17 - 00:03:46:05
Emanuele Zannini
Absolutely. I mean, the project actually did much more because, one aspect is to secure that the product is tastes good, looks good, smells good. Also, able to provide the same, let's say biting experience. Chewing experience.
00:03:46:10 - 00:03:47:22
Abigail Acton
Mouthfeel. I think it's called.
00:03:47:23 - 00:04:16:22
Emanuele Zannini
Yes, absolutely. And also the, the same, flavor evolution while you actually need the products, you know, and, besides these also we are working in a more systemic approach. So, securing where those raw materials coming from. So interacting with farmers, understanding also their needs, how we can actually combine their needs and also the needs to produce more plant protein, particularly from legumes.
00:04:16:23 - 00:04:36:20
Emanuele Zannini
Also were discussing with with the food court, the food industry in particular ingredients company and producers, also making sure that the products that we were developing are much healthier and nutritious than regular counterpart, because that's also the the one of the key acts that that basically the meat lovers pointed out.
00:04:37:01 - 00:04:43:06
Abigail Acton
Yes, indeed. You're absolutely right. Can you give me some ideas of what sources you were looking at? So what are we talking about being used here?
00:04:43:12 - 00:05:04:06
Emanuele Zannini
Well, basically we are using different, legumes protein, like, chickpeas and lentils. Also we're introducing European quinoa productions. But besides this also we were trying to, let's say, in the Second Life or size streams in particular, coming from pasta producer, from bread crust and also from doing side streams.
00:05:04:08 - 00:05:06:02
Abigail Acton
And how did you go about doing that?
00:05:06:05 - 00:05:34:05
Emanuele Zannini
Oh, very fantastic, because actually well, we were basically trying to improve the nutritional property and also the biological value by, fermenting those side streams with increased fungi. The fungus, when you're using your heavy, you know, when you are a consuming convert or when you are using, when you are consuming tempeh, for example, using those fungi, we were actually able to improve the nitrogen content.
00:05:34:05 - 00:05:43:04
Emanuele Zannini
So the protein content and also reducing some of the natural genes that the normal you find when you are consuming plant based, products.
00:05:43:04 - 00:05:46:09
Abigail Acton
So when we say side streams, where where were these materials coming from?
00:05:46:11 - 00:06:13:05
Emanuele Zannini
Well, it was coming from, pasta industry. Pasta leftover or bread company producing let's say, sandwich bread. So basically the bread crust was actually removed and but, you know, they're still containing high quality nutrients. They basically could be securily, you know, upcycled. So and to find a second life and being introduced in the food system was very important.
00:06:13:06 - 00:06:28:24
Abigail Acton
So yeah I know it is important. So this is great because you're cutting down waste and you're finding a kind of more efficient way of producing food. But I'm a little confused about the notion of what you do next. So you've got your carbohydrate sources. You're encouraging the growth of these food grade fungus, the sort that we have already on common.
00:06:29:01 - 00:06:33:00
Abigail Acton
We're consuming happily already. And then what do you do with these fungi as well?
00:06:33:00 - 00:06:55:18
Emanuele Zannini
Then at the end, we are not separating fungi with size streams all come together and then we are producing ingredients. Okay. And then will be introduced, will be functional. I mean, so in making sure the basically the proteins stretch and mimic the, let's say the corridor or mimic the, the, the, the meat structure in the developing or reconstructing the the end products.
00:06:55:20 - 00:07:03:20
Abigail Acton
Okay. Great. So the food material, these foods are then adapted and processed to become substitutes.
00:07:03:20 - 00:07:04:09
Abigail Acton
For.
00:07:04:12 - 00:07:05:16
Abigail Acton
Meat based industries.
00:07:05:22 - 00:07:13:05
Emanuele Zannini
Yeah, absolutely. For the meat industry also, for example, one of the fungi will actually providing very garlic flavor.
00:07:13:05 - 00:07:13:17
Abigail Acton
Oh, great.
00:07:13:17 - 00:07:16:17
Emanuele Zannini
So what we are actually using for meatballs analogs.
00:07:16:18 - 00:07:34:02
Abigail Acton
Oh right. Excellent. So in fact it also has an added ingredient. So it's like literally a complete protein part part meat. The part not meat. Right. And very interesting. Thank you. I know you said something about trying to, you know, talk with farmers trying to bridge the gap between the production and the marketing and so on. Did you did you yourself go out and talk with anybody?
00:07:34:02 - 00:07:37:05
Abigail Acton
Who did you have experience with them meeting anybody or talking to anybody?
00:07:37:06 - 00:07:38:01
Emanuele Zannini
Oh, definitely.
00:07:38:04 - 00:07:41:14
Abigail Acton
Come on, tell us some stories. How did it go? Well, people open to these ideas.
00:07:41:15 - 00:08:17:12
Emanuele Zannini
Well, it was very, let's say, inspiring because, most of the times you know, underestimate, which are the challenges they are facing, you know, because they are, dealing with, with several trends, you know, with environment, with, climate change, with the cost of their products they are using. So, and, it was very interesting to see basically how we could actually support them in diversifying the business model, you know, because most of the time they were producing wheat, wheat, or sunflower oil.
00:08:17:14 - 00:08:37:15
Emanuele Zannini
And we actually introduced that the legumes as well to improve the crop rotation, to improve the soil fertility. Indeed. Actually, the the farmers, that were included in our study, they were actually implementing regenerative agriculture farming. So basically to be able to produce more, better, but requesting less from the soil.
00:08:37:17 - 00:08:50:03
Abigail Acton
Fantastic. So in fact, there's also an environmental impact, right? At the very initial stage of this and the actual growth patterns, there's an a positive environmental impact, but the environment benefits from a greater crop rotation. And as you say, less demands on the soil.
00:08:50:05 - 00:09:12:01
Emanuele Zannini
Yes, actually was very important for us to make sure and to prove that what we were doing was sustainable from an environmental perspective, from, also economic perspective, because the food industry was actually pointed out how costly will be. Now, if we want to industrialize these products. So we did the business analysis to make sure that that's what we were promising.
00:09:12:01 - 00:09:32:05
Emanuele Zannini
It was very convincing and also, basically able to reduce the time to market that basically normally companies are struggling with. So definitely, you know, it was a team effort and the things I think I'm very proud of it that, we just remove the silo thinking approach.
00:09:32:07 - 00:09:36:05
Abigail Acton
When you say the silo thinking approach, what are you talking about? And how is it better now?
00:09:36:07 - 00:09:50:20
Emanuele Zannini
Well, basically, you know, the food industry doesn't think what is the best for just for them, but what is the best the intrinsic approach. So understanding that, if if we are performing something that is better for everybody is also better for myself.
00:09:50:22 - 00:09:53:10
Abigail Acton
Great. And also I presume communication channels are.
00:09:53:10 - 00:09:53:22
Emanuele Zannini
Absolutely.
00:09:53:24 - 00:10:11:08
Abigail Acton
So easier for farmers to talk to the people further down the line for the production and so on and so on. Yes. Can you give us an example of I mean, it was fantastic listening to you talking about the edible fungi. Can you give us some examples now of what you mean? For example, if I think of chickpeas, what can be done with chickpeas in a way that I hadn't thought of before.
00:10:11:10 - 00:10:36:01
Emanuele Zannini
But with the chickpeas, actually, we can be better actually able to produce, a semi-hard cheese, like, because basically we are actually using the starch content to actually produce a proper, a proper structure in neurology. And also chickpeas also has a good fat content. And also we know in the cheese how add component is very important to provide, you know, a unique flavor and unique ripening.
00:10:36:01 - 00:10:45:00
Emanuele Zannini
And actually we were actually able to mimic, you know, this flavor revolutions also using specific fungi and also edible fungi and lactic acid bacteria.
00:10:45:03 - 00:10:54:20
Abigail Acton
I mean I think this is wonderful and I would love to try some of this. Is it available on supermarket shelves or shop shelves near me, or is this still something that's a sort of prototype concept?
00:10:54:22 - 00:11:03:15
Emanuele Zannini
Well, the project basically was supporting the company at reaching the Pre-Commercial stage, so now it's up to the company to, let's say to.
00:11:03:17 - 00:11:04:05
Abigail Acton
To actually.
00:11:04:05 - 00:11:09:11
Emanuele Zannini
Market. Yes, to move on the founder and to let's say, did do the say the last mile.
00:11:09:11 - 00:11:12:13
Abigail Acton
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You've enabled them and facilitated them to get this far.
00:11:12:15 - 00:11:23:16
Emanuele Zannini
But that was the main goal of this, the of this project to support them, to provide knowledge, to provide strategies and to, let's say, succeed in bringing those products to the markets.
00:11:23:18 - 00:11:27:09
Abigail Acton
Thank you so much. Does anyone have any questions? Yeah. Tuen.
00:11:27:11 - 00:11:51:01
Tuen Veldkamp
Yeah. the Europeans are now actively, reducing their meat consumption for a variety of reasons. So we're including health environmental or animal welfare, factors. Another EU project is also focusing on the, the dietary shift could you elaborate what the what the EU could do to support this shift? Can you you can think of labeling, marketing, standards.
00:11:51:06 - 00:12:21:19
Emanuele Zannini
One thing I think is, actually is important. And actually we broke down in our, in our policy brief that we, we provide to the EU it was public food procurement because I mean we are at the EU is actually feeding over 70 million of students. And definitely this is really could be a good starting point in using public money to, let's say, educate a young generation and how we should interact in a better way with what we are eating in our plate.
00:12:21:21 - 00:12:48:12
Abigail Acton
Well, that's fantastic, because then you, as you say, you're reaching them young and opening minds to innovative concepts, which might be quite difficult to do with them with some sectors of the public. Excellent. Thank you very much. Good question, Tuen. In fact, I'm going to turn to you now. So SUStainable INsect CHAIN wanted to contribute to novel protein provision for feed and food in Europe by overcoming the remaining barriers for increasing the economic viability of the insect value chain and opening up markets.
00:12:48:17 - 00:12:58:09
Abigail Acton
So if we now turn to insects as a potential source of food and animal feed, what is the benefit of using them? Please Tuen why are we going to do this?
00:12:58:11 - 00:13:14:22
Tuen Veldkamp
Yeah. That's interesting. I consider insects as the most promising, alternative source of protein available in Europe to to enter the feeder food market. Insects contribute to the sustainability of the food chain, as they are, in my opinion, the missing link that can close the product life cycle loops.
00:13:14:22 - 00:13:18:04
Abigail Acton
What do you mean by closing product life cycle loops?
00:13:18:06 - 00:13:32:13
Tuen Veldkamp
If you are looking into the food chain, a lot of bio waste is lost. Cannot be used in the food chain. And by use of, insects, you can reuse this bio waste to grow the insects and use the insects again into the food chain.
00:13:32:15 - 00:13:38:08
Abigail Acton
Right? Yeah. No. That's excellent obviously. And so what insects can be raised and and in which way can they be used.
00:13:38:10 - 00:13:51:15
Tuen Veldkamp
Yeah. The different insects can be raised. For example, black shoulder fly. And another species is a mealworm which can be used for animal feed, for they are most used for animal feed.
00:13:51:17 - 00:13:54:11
Abigail Acton
I use them to feed my black birds in the garden. Yes.
00:13:54:22 - 00:14:13:02
Tuen Veldkamp
Yeah they are and are really also used in in private gardens etc.. But mealworms also can be used for human, food, like, crickets and grasshoppers. So it's, there's a little bit of shift, between the different species for use in human food or in animal feed.
00:14:13:06 - 00:14:24:19
Abigail Acton
Okay. This is wonderful. Thank you very much. Okay. It seems logical, very logical. But can can you tell us what's holding us back? Because I get the sense that this is not as widespread on our shelves as it could be. What's holding us back?
00:14:24:21 - 00:14:51:15
Tuen Veldkamp
Yeah. Recurrently. What's holding us back is, that the insects can only be fed with remainders from vegetal origin, which are currently also allowed to feed directly to pig and poultry. And this is because of safety issues. So only certified substrates can be used to grow the insects. And this is really hampering further development. So a lot of studies are currently ongoing.
00:14:51:21 - 00:15:02:23
Tuen Veldkamp
To test the safety of novel, substrates, which you can use to grow the insects. Okay. And with substrates, I mean, the difference bio waste sources in combination.
00:15:03:00 - 00:15:21:04
Abigail Acton
Super. Okay. So one thing that's a bit of a bottleneck to the furthering of this is the manner in which the insects are reared, the food upon which they're reared. But what about public acceptance of this concept? Did your project work at all on identifying where the public is on this idea?
00:15:21:06 - 00:15:45:23
Tuen Veldkamp
Yeah, we for the, applications in human food, we also, tested, consumer preferences, for different types of products. In the project six different insect products were developed, and they were also subjected to consumer panels, for testing these for tastiness, for, but also the acceptance, in mind because, insects are quite different.
00:15:46:00 - 00:16:03:14
Tuen Veldkamp
On the menu, in, in European areas, I can say in Asia it's quite common to eat insects. Therefore, really in this project we decided to include insect ingredients so the protein and oil fractions into our regular, dinner meals.
00:16:03:14 - 00:16:21:17
Abigail Acton
So that's quite interesting. That's a little bit like the edible yeasts being added to increase flavor and things. So we really are talking complementary proteins here. So products produced from insect rearing going into meat products or going give me some idea of the products that you were actually creating here. I'm trying to guess it. Just tell me.
00:16:21:21 - 00:16:48:16
Tuen Veldkamp
Yeah, you can think of, for example, a branch, you can use insects, as an ingredient in bread, in falafel, in, pasta. So these are some examples. We we also produce meatballs, as an alternative, for, for meat consumption. So this is, really new developments by which we should have tried to increase the acceptability of insect products, on the European dish.
00:16:48:22 - 00:16:53:00
Abigail Acton
And what was the reaction of your panel? How did that go? How did the testing process go?
00:16:53:04 - 00:17:23:14
Tuen Veldkamp
Yeah. The response of the consumers, it was quite, good and, above our expectations. So if you, include the products in the dinners, then, it's, it went fine. And also we tested, the acceptability for insect fats, animal products, because this is another element which we studied in the project. And yeah, for Europe, we think, both are, well accepted by European consumers.
00:17:23:16 - 00:17:36:09
Abigail Acton
Super. Excellent. Let's talk about animal feed because that is indeed another pathway. Can you tell me a little bit about what the benefit of using insects as a basis for animal feed would be, for example, to the environment? Well, what does that save? How does that help?
00:17:36:12 - 00:18:14:09
Tuen Veldkamp
Yeah, the main focus of using insects in animal feed is to try to make your diet composition more regional. So not, importing for example, soybeans from Latin American or fishmeal. There is a big discussion on overfishing of oceans. So if you can exchange these traditional sources in animal feed by, insect, products. Yeah, then you will have a lot of benefits, on, sustainability, for example, for the environment, insects that can be reached, on bio waste sources.
00:18:14:09 - 00:18:30:19
Tuen Veldkamp
And as I already told, this is, a real circular element. You can close, the cycles. And so by this. Yeah, you can really have benefits, into animal feed, making the circle, complete, bringing it back into the food chain.
00:18:30:24 - 00:18:48:07
Abigail Acton
Yeah. No. That's wonderful. So it's sourced locally. It's using waste streams that otherwise, maybe would be disposed of in a way that's perhaps less environmentally friendly. Yeah. No, it's a great idea. Okay. Superb. So can I just ask you now? I know it's not the only way we've been talking about animal feed and and human food. It's not the only way insects could be used.
00:18:48:07 - 00:18:54:14
Abigail Acton
So can you think if we were to look into the future, how else could the product of insect rearing be used?
00:18:54:16 - 00:19:08:15
Tuen Veldkamp
Yeah, insects can also be used and that's what we currently see in Asia, insects can be used also for technical, applications. And then you can think of use for, transportation fuel.
00:19:08:16 - 00:19:09:12
Abigail Acton
Biofuel.
00:19:09:15 - 00:19:33:14
Tuen Veldkamp
Yeah. Biofuel. It's, the, the lipids of the black solar fly. It's really, good energy source also for a biofuel, but it's, a little bit lower into the cascade. So we really prefer to use the highly nutritious insect oil for animal feed or for human food, of course. And, yeah. So, it's it's an alternative.
00:19:33:14 - 00:19:45:00
Tuen Veldkamp
And what we see, outside of Europe, that insects are also used for biodiesel production if they are fed with substrates that are not completely safe.
00:19:45:02 - 00:19:49:07
Abigail Acton
Oh, I see, that's great. So when they can't go into any other stream, then why not use them as fuel?
00:19:49:13 - 00:20:02:01
Tuen Veldkamp
Then? You are really, see the insects as a kind of processing, step to make. Yeah. Not that safe substrates usable for example, as an energy source.
00:20:02:01 - 00:20:21:19
Abigail Acton
Tuen did your project do anything at all about welfare. I mean, what do we actually doing when we come to think about. Because, you know, we're getting constantly informed about just how sentient the animals that we're already, farming are. We don't want any horrible surprises down the line about just just what the crickets are perceiving around them. So what's happening about animal welfare standards?
00:20:21:21 - 00:20:50:20
Tuen Veldkamp
Yeah, animal welfare was not involved in the project as a research topic, but recently, yeah, insect welfare is very important, as we see also in all the right livestock sector. If you think of pigs and poultry, etc.. So, we are, now developing different projects, on animal welfare because first we have to set the tools how to measure welfare of insects.
00:20:50:22 - 00:21:05:10
Tuen Veldkamp
So it's more easy to measure welfare, we think, in pigs and poultry, than in insect larvae, for example. So the tools have to be developed and therefore we would like to start new projects very soon.
00:21:05:12 - 00:21:11:23
Abigail Acton
Right. Excellent. Thank you so much. That was very, very well explained. Much appreciated. Does anyone have any observations or comments to make to Tuen?
00:21:12:00 - 00:21:13:08
Emanuele Zannini
I have a question actually.
00:21:13:09 - 00:21:14:00
Abigail Acton
Emmanuel.
00:21:14:02 - 00:21:42:14
Emanuele Zannini
Yes. I was wondering, our mostly time consuming constraints are influenced also by the political positions. So I was wondering because in Italy, now there are very strong debates, you know, and, I can see that most of the time politicians are heavily influencing, you know, the consumer perspective towards a specific topic like this one. So I was wondering if you could comment or if you have a feel the same experience.
00:21:42:16 - 00:22:14:05
Tuen Veldkamp
Yeah. We know it's really also, country dependent. And for me, it's it's clear Italy has with respect to other European countries, quite, strong, culture on food. And so you have your own, in Italy, your own preferences. So I think, we, we, we really need this is for the insect project. And I think also for your project, really important to focus on the perception in each country.
00:22:14:05 - 00:22:27:19
Tuen Veldkamp
And, we have also seen in our project we have quite differences between, for example, Germany or France or Italy. So it's quite important that we choose the right options to go into the markets.
00:22:27:21 - 00:22:52:22
Abigail Acton
Yeah. Adopt the process depending on the cultural expectations. Yeah, I know that's wonderful. Well, Erlend can probably tell us a little bit about that too, because Erlend was responsible for something called BugBox, the bugbox project. Initially it created software to run a fully automated mass insect rearing reactor. This new technology, which is easily scalable, targets the farmers of edible insects to make farming safer, more efficient and more cost effective.
00:22:53:01 - 00:23:07:12
Abigail Acton
So talking about cultural acceptance from country to country as Tuen did very, very interestingly. Can I ask you Erlend , you got involved in this because you traveled a lot, in different countries around the world. What did the traveling show you? What did you learn from that?
00:23:07:14 - 00:23:33:04
Erlend Sild
Yeah. That's true. My previous background is actually from shipping industry, and there was I was really traveling a lot, especially in Southeast Asia and Africa and different countries around the world. And what I noticed was that the high nutritional food is very unevenly distributed in the world. Right? It's not. So it's a few deficit, but, but unevenly.
00:23:33:06 - 00:23:44:20
Erlend Sild
And then started to look how we could produce some, some alternative ways, more sustainable way, high nutritional food. So and I finished, and finished in the insect industry.
00:23:44:22 - 00:23:59:08
Abigail Acton
Right. You moved from being a seafarer to working out, how to make insect farming, effective, which is an interesting jump. Did you. I mean, I presume you saw the acceptability with which cultures around the world consume insects without thinking about it.
00:23:59:10 - 00:24:35:23
Erlend Sild
That's true. There is statistics which says that, currently over 2 billion people are consuming or having insects as a part of the diet, their daily ratios. But my decision was purely mathematical basis of business based, considering not just even the growth of the global population, but the growth of the GDP, which is a mainly it's coming from Southeast Asia, where people are starting living better, they want to eat better, they want to order ready foods, dining outside, taking more pets.
00:24:36:03 - 00:25:04:02
Erlend Sild
They need all proteins and reversing those estimated values or, or estimations in, in the monetary base into the tonnes. How much proteins we actually missing on the market by 2030? That was a pure calculation. So, we cannot produce it by on a traditional way. We need to find some some more, sustainable ways to produce, animal proteins.
00:25:04:05 - 00:25:16:20
Abigail Acton
Tell us a little bit about what you actually did within the project bugbox, because we've been talking about encouraging uptake for human and animal feed. So what was the gap that bugbox tried to resolve? And how did it go about doing so?
00:25:16:22 - 00:25:41:04
Erlend Sild
Yes. The main gap was this is on the field, actually on the complementary proteins is the widespread enthusiasm and the actually the production efficiency. So you can be successful or trade on the market with complementary or sustainable proteins when your unit economics doesn't work, you can't just be 3 or 5 times more expensive on the market and expect that you will succeed.
00:25:41:09 - 00:25:53:08
Erlend Sild
It doesn't matter which, which kind of, positive psychological effect to you provide. So unit economics should be the basic, and that's, that's a main gap BugBox is solving.
00:25:53:13 - 00:26:06:17
Abigail Acton
So really we're talking about here when you say unit economics, it gets you really it's cost efficiency basically. Right. So if the only way that you can produce them is, is not on scale, then the price of the product is very expensive. And who's going to want to buy that I get it okay. So can you tell me a little bit more.
00:26:06:18 - 00:26:13:12
Abigail Acton
What BugBox actually set out to do then to resolve this gap between the enthusiasm to actually consume this, but the, the difficulty in production.
00:26:13:14 - 00:26:35:06
Erlend Sild
True, you need to just look into the production ways and what are the main costs. And as Tuen mentioned already, it is very much one of the highest components is a feed. How can you optimize the feed price? Because, feed is almost a 30% of the total costs when you farm. And if you don't control the feed, you don't control your costs.
00:26:35:06 - 00:26:56:00
Erlend Sild
And you are not efficient and competitive. And the feed is crucial as well, because, the food security or, let's say safety starts from the feed because that's why that's it's a main reason why we're talking about the insects is a conversion rate issue. For example, have a ten kilos of the feed, how much do you get in return?
00:26:56:05 - 00:27:20:12
Erlend Sild
In these metrics Insects are just, just number one. So none of the existing species cannot beat the, insects in this ratio. And another thing which is happening is that people are afraid that with a novel food, they are going to lose the traditional way, how the family is gathering or the spread of the evening for a family dinner.
00:27:20:13 - 00:27:42:12
Erlend Sild
Some kind of insects are coming, or plant based things. Where is our steak? Where is our lamp? Where is our traditional food? But it's not going to happen. It will remain, but we just add some new ingredients to live in a more sustainable way. But if we can eliminate that fear, I think we will eliminate resistance as well.
00:27:42:14 - 00:27:49:00
Abigail Acton
Perfect. Perfect . Erlend, in the bugbox project, what did you actually achieve? What? What did you create?
00:27:49:02 - 00:28:17:02
Erlend Sild
Yeah, we created fully automated and autonomous rearing environment. We call it rearing reactor, which basically gives us, efficiency in the rearing phase. And we also developed, software, which actually controls totally all the processes, starting from rearing up to the processing, packaging. And that’s our IP basically what we can, what we can say that we achieved during this project.
00:28:17:04 - 00:28:26:07
Abigail Acton
Oh that's fantastic. Okay. So was it a prototype? I mean, how many insects did you manage to rear using this facility? How big did you manage to make this?
00:28:26:07 - 00:28:48:06
Erlend Sild
Yeah, main KPIs for us has been always being the square meter productivity and the cubic meter productivity. What is the production efficiency of the one cubic meter of the rearing box, let's say. And what is a square meter productivity of your total investment. What are we investing into the facility. So we achieved, really good results.
00:28:48:07 - 00:28:58:15
Erlend Sild
And we can say that, we most probably are the most effective and efficient, production technology provider in the global wise at the moment.
00:28:58:17 - 00:29:09:05
Abigail Acton
Okay. And so, I mean, I know that one of the problems facing producers are, are pathogens, how did your product actually help to reduce the influence of pathogens to reduce pathogen presence?
00:29:09:09 - 00:29:39:04
Erlend Sild
Yes. This is a risk that need to be mitigated because pathogens are airborne and widely spread it everywhere. And we solved this issue by closing this rearing environment because we control basically not only what happens inside the rearing reactor, but also in the room where the rearing reactors are located. So in a double, the air is clean, it's totally clean and sterilized, it's overpressured and so on.
00:29:39:06 - 00:29:47:23
Erlend Sild
It is, risk which need to be mitigated because when you invest some millions, you don't want to lose it because of the poor risk mitigation.
00:29:47:23 - 00:29:56:10
Abigail Acton
And, and so pathogens really can cause that sort of loss. I mean, can't you just go in and clean a facility up if you, if you find that there's something that's, impacting on your insects?
00:29:56:12 - 00:30:01:18
Erlend Sild
No, you you need a more, deeper. No. You can't.
00:30:01:20 - 00:30:08:22
Abigail Acton
There we go. That’s a that’s straightforward. So what happens then? You invest millions, you try to grow your insects, something comes in that is killing them, what do you have to do?
00:30:08:24 - 00:30:11:06
Erlend Sild
You need to build another facility, right?
00:30:11:09 - 00:30:13:00
Abigail Acton
You have to shut the whole thing down , do you?
00:30:13:02 - 00:30:13:18
Erlend Sild
Yes.
00:30:14:10 - 00:30:49:11
Erlend Sild
Or you can rear another species which are immune of the pathogens. They just carry them, but they don't die, and you still can operate and to produce. But in EU, it's strictly regulated. Which species you can rear for human consumption. And, those other species might not apply for such regulation. So it is you can you can still export your production to Asia or some other countries, but but yes, that's, that's a huge risks, not huge, but let's say smart.
00:30:49:11 - 00:30:52:20
Erlend Sild
You need to be considering. Yeah. Think smart.
00:30:52:20 - 00:31:06:13
Abigail Acton
You need, you need to take steps before it becomes an issue. Super. Okay, so what's your what's your company doing now? What's bugbox up to now because you developed this mass rearing system with the software. My understanding now is that you're getting quite involved in AI. How are we using AI and how what are you up to now?
00:31:06:15 - 00:31:40:05
Erlend Sild
Yes, now we are interface, where we are starting to sell, our technology worldwide. We have, preorders, let's say offtake agreements more than value in €20 million already in different places in, in Singapore, in Australia, in Europe also. And that gives us an opportunity to collect more data that, analyzing the different farms, different locations around the globe gives us enough data to put into our systems, and algorithms can work on that.
00:31:40:05 - 00:31:45:15
Erlend Sild
How to constantly improve and make the production processes more efficiently.
00:31:45:18 - 00:31:50:07
Abigail Acton
Okay, so what is that increasing data tell you, and how does it help you to train your AI?
00:31:50:09 - 00:32:19:21
Erlend Sild
If you have a farm with a thousand rearing reactors in one location and, thousand rearing reactors in another location, you can actually put those 1000 to operate in a little bit different conditions. Then another thousand and you can get the result. And if you can reduce, for example, let's say pure example, rearing temperature let's say less than one degree or 0.5 degrees.
00:32:19:23 - 00:32:45:11
Erlend Sild
It actually gives you operational cost savings already if you have a similar results with other reactors. But doing those analyzes based on ten reactors and ten reactors, then you get some correlations, which not might be true. So you need the bigger volume than that, to analyze and repeat that research or analysis.
00:32:45:17 - 00:32:54:16
Abigail Acton
Okay. That's great. So super. That explains it very nicely. Thank you. Thanks for the example. Well that was excellent. Thanks. So and so does anyone have any questions or comments to make to Erlend please. Yeah, Tuen.
00:32:54:16 - 00:33:18:16
Tuen Veldkamp
Yes it’s very interesting to to hear about the system. You you ship the system to, to grow crickets and grasshoppers. So it's based on, dry feet and as you know, for black soldier fly and there is 30% dry matter in the feed. So that's really a wet, substrate issue or equipment suitable to grow also black soldier fly?
00:33:18:18 - 00:33:50:09
Emanuele Zannini
No. Our technology is purely, adopted and created for autochthonous species. So dry feed and the six legged. Yeah. And, why we chose that? Because first we had the knowledge, one of our founders is, young biologist in that field. Very highly recommend textbook. And another one, that that gives this species opportunity to our clients to trade on the both markets, on the feed and the food.
00:33:50:11 - 00:34:12:00
Emanuele Zannini
Yeah. If your unit economics allow you to trade on the feed market as well. So which, black black soldier flies don't follow but the like, by the way, you black soldier approach very much because taking out the bio waste and making another valuable commodity on the food chain that's, just that's what we actually need.
00:34:12:02 - 00:34:13:08
Emanuele Zannini
So. Yeah.
00:34:13:10 - 00:34:14:17
Tuen Veldkamp
Thank you, very clear.
00:34:14:19 - 00:34:34:14
Abigail Acton
Perfect. Excellent, excellent. Well, listen, I just want to thank you all for sharing your ideas and your time with us today. I think it was just really fascinating. And I like the fact that you're all coming at this from slightly different angles. And I look forward to some of these products being available for me to buy. Thanks to your work and the work of others like you.
00:34:34:16 - 00:34:36:10
Abigail Acton
Very very good, good bye.
00:34:36:12 - 00:34:40:14
ALL
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
00:34:40:16 - 00:35:02:16
Abigail Acton
If you've enjoyed this episode, follow us on Spotify and Apple and check out the podcast homepage on the CORDIS website. Subscribe to make sure the hottest research in the EU funded science programs isn't passing you by. And if you're enjoying listening, why not spread the word from the latest innovations in batteries to involving more women in science? In our last 46 episodes, they'll be something
00:35:02:20 - 00:35:28:12
Abigail Acton
To tweak your curiosity. Perhaps you want to know what other EU funded projects are doing to make the use of complementary proteins more scalable? The CORDIS website will give you an insight into the results of projects funded by Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe that are working in this area. The website has articles and interviews that explore the results of research being conducted in a very broad range of domains and subjects, from pulses to pulsars.
00:35:28:14 - 00:35:48:05
Abigail Acton
There's something there for you. Maybe you're involved in a project or would like to apply for funding. Take a look at what others are doing in your domain. So come and check out the research that's revealing what makes our world tick. We're always happy to hear from you! Drop us a line editorial@cordis.europa.eu. Until next time.
00:35:48:07 - 00:35:51:21
Abigail Acton
Changing patterns of consumption put pressure on traditional protein sources
A growing global population, socio-demographic change, climate change: there is an increased pressure on the world’s resources to provide not only more but also different types of food. The production of animal-based protein in particular, generating greenhouse gas emissions and placing an ever-increasing demand on natural resources. Global population growth will give rise to unprecedented demand for food and animal feed. Other changes, such as increased incomes and urbanisation, will result in changes in consumption patterns. We need to develop ways to produce more existing sources of protein more efficiently. Animal-based protein has an important role as part of a sustainable diet and as a contributor to food security. But now is the time for alternative sources of complementary protein for direct human consumption, and animal feed, to increase their market share. In this episode we are going to be looking at how to increase the production and market uptake of complementary proteins: plant-based, insect and other sources. We are considering safety, marketing challenges and cutting-edge approaches to rearing. Caramelised, crispy grasshoppers anyone? Talking us through the twists and turns of getting such innovative products onto a very traditional market are three researchers, all of whom have received support from EU funding: Emanuele Zannini(opens in new window) has a PhD in Applied Biomolecular Science and is now a senior researcher coordinator at the School of Food and Nutritional Sciences(opens in new window), University College Cork. He is particularly interested in developing plant-based food options to reduce the emissions related to animal rearing and farming, a topic he explored through the SMART PROTEIN project. Tuen Veldkamp(opens in new window) is a senior researcher in Animal Nutrition at Wageningen University and Research(opens in new window) (WUR) and specialises in insects. The SUSINCHAIN project tested and demonstrated innovative rearing methods to help the development of a smoothly functioning, commercially viable European insect supply chain. Erlend Sild(opens in new window) is the founder of the deep-tech company, BugBox(opens in new window), which has developed an industrial and scalable technology for sustainable protein production from crickets, providing competitive production costs and increasing efficiency using AI. The BUGBOX project developed a system to make insect rearing more profitable.
Happy to hear from you!
If you have any feedback, we’re always happy to hear from you! Send us any comments, questions or suggestions to: editorial@cordis.europa.eu.