Fly farmer named BBC’s Food Chain Champion
Fly farmer AgriProtein has been named the BBC Food Chain Global Champion for its flagship MagMeal protein substitute for fishmeal.
Part of the BBC Food & Farming Awards 2017, the Food Chain Global Champion is a new category recognising outstanding work that is challenging established methods and practices to secure the future.
BBC World Service senior commissioning editor Steve Titherington said: “The culture of food, the science, technology, politics and business associated with food are key concerns to our worldwide audience. Our Global Champion Award highlights both the challenges and fascinating successes being created by individuals around the world.”
'An idea whose time has come'
AgriProtein, which recently moved its HQ from South Africa to London, has fly farm projects under development in several countries to produce MagMeal - made from black soldier fly larvae reared on food waste - for the $100 billion aquafeed market and ultimately for poultry, pigs and petfood.
AgriProtein co-founder and chief executive Jason Drew said: “Insect protein is an idea whose time has come and we are now producing it at an industrial scale. This award is a vote of confidence in the waste-to-nutrient industry.
“Trawling for fishmeal is one of the most destructive activities on the planet. Replacing it in animal feed is good news for the environment and means more of the world’s dwindling population of wild fish can be harvested sustainably for human consumption. By using existing waste to rear fly larvae, we’re reducing the greenhouse gases and pollution caused by organic landfill.”
New EU regulations permit the use of insect-based nutrients in aquafeed since 1 July 2017, while other geographies already permit its wider use in agriculture and petfood.
Using a factory roll-out model developed with global engineering firm Christof Industries, the company is able to deliver fly farms on a turnkey basis anywhere in the world at the rate of up to 25 factories per year.
UK factories within three years
Earlier this year AgriProtein entered the Global Cleantech Top 100 and won a CleanEquity award for its environmental technology research. Last year its industrially-scalable solution to the depletion of fish stocks in the Indian Ocean won the Australian government’s Blue Economy Challenge 2016.
A Food Chain programme about MagMeal, The Maggot Masters, aired on BBC World Service on Thursday and is available on iPlayer.
Speaking to fishfarmingexpert.com in late June, Drew said AgriProtein aimed to have factories up and running in the UK within three years to supply the aquafeed market.
He said at the time: “Our teams are actively developing a number of UK sites at the moment. Whilst our build time is typically only 12 months, this is once we have EIA (environmental impact assessment) and other planning permissions which can take 12- 24 months to obtain."
