Crickets as future protein source in organic feed for poultry and pigs?

Researchers from the SLU have studied how young pigs grow on a diet consisting of corn flour, rice bran and either cricket flour or fish flour. It was also studied how the pigs grew if the diet contained flour based on whole crickets or flour where the crickets were scaled and without legs.

The study showed that the pigs grew very well on the diets containing cricket flour. They digested these diets better than the feed with fish flour and they also showed signs of being able to use more of the digested protein to grow. The flour without bones did not work better than the one with the bones left, and one conclusion is that you should not scale the legs off the crickets, because you "wipe away" good nutrition. The study concludes that crickets can be a good protein alternative in feed for pigs.

"Within organic production there is an urgent need to find new and suitable protein foods with the right amino acid quality for both poultry and pigs. Therefore, this is an interesting result”, says Magdalena Åkerfeldt, researcher at SLU and linked to EPOK. There is also a great deal of interest in insect protein in organic production and some research in the field already exists.

Today, it is not permitted in the EU to breed insects for feed or food. It is also not included as approved animal feed according to the rules for organic production. At the same time, crickets can be of interest to Swedish organic animals in the future, given that crickets can be cultivated in Sweden. Magdalena Åkerfeldt, together with colleagues, has applied for money to investigate how the House Cricket  (Acheta domesticus) raised on red clover, in controlled environment and under Swedish conditions, can serve as a protein source for poultry and pig. The crickets transform the clover, a commodity that is difficult to use for poultry and pigs, and one can efficiently produce a high quality protein source that is suitable for poultry and pigs.