Sustainability of insect use for feed and food: Life Cycle Assessment perspective

The emergence of insect production as a source of sustainable protein, aimed to substitute traditional feeds and foods, indicates the need to perform their environmental impact assessment with a holistic approach and on a fair functional basis. The study aims at life cycle assessment of insect production at industrial level and further insect biomass processing for feed and food purposes. In order to identify a relative sustainability state of insect-based products, the results of life cycle assessment are compared to the appropriate benchmarks (protein feeds, whey protein powder, and chicken meat). Current study includes an analysis based on industrial insect production data, with further scenarios modelling based on data from industries, databases and literature. It is indicated that environmental performance of insect based feed could be beneficial, provided that suitable diet is selected. Protein diets are responsible for high environmental impacts and high insect yields, while the utilization of manure is environmentally beneficial, but does not result in high yields. Low value food processing by-products (distilled grains) and high-impacting waste streams use for insect growing are confirmed to be among the best strategies for sustainable feed production. The production of insect-based protein powder and meat substitute, based on food by-products, is 2-5 times more environmentally beneficial than that of traditional products. The need for extended studies of different insect species use in combination with identified beneficial options is highlighted.