Insects – our next feed producer?

Innovation Norway, the Norwegian Agricultural Cooperatives and Arena Heidner had put together a programme with presentations and workshop activites intended to facilitate contact building, knowledge sharing and discussions on development and commercialization of insect-based feed ingredients.
David Drew, founder and director of  AgriProtein, a South-Africa based company focusing on nutrient recyling, talked about their operations and experiences from large scale insect conversion of food waste into valuable feed components, such as proteins and fats.

Availability and regulatory issues of waste resources for insect biorefinery were discussed by Diana Lindberg og Nofima, and Monica W. Stubberud from the Norwegian Food Safety Authority, respectively. Researcher Erik-Jan Lock from the National Institute of Nutrition and Seafood-research, who has also established the Network on Insects in the Circular Economy – NICE (http://insect-network.org/) gave a talk on a couple of Norwegian research projects worth noting. After lunch, Harald Espeland of Norinsect AS  – a start up which has already connected with several research partners and is well underway to establish a plant for insect biorefinery in Norway – talked about some preliminary research results on the importance of insect diet in relation to final product.

The day was concluded with a workshop where the participants were divided into groups discussing waste resources, production process and market.
On behalf of the organisers, we would like to thank everyone who participated!
Resources from the day, i.e. presentations, workshop notes and press articles has been published here.