Insects Could Help Turn Beer Waste Into Beef

"People do not like eating insects. Livestock are less picky," writes the Economist.Of course, the insects need to eat, too. To date, they have mostly been reared on leftover chicken feed. But the supply of that is limited, and if insect-reared meat is to take off, new sources will be needed. In a paper in Applied Entomology, Niels Eriksen, a biochemist at Aalborg University, suggests feeding them on the waste products of the beer industry. The world knocks back around 185bn litres of beer every year. Each litre produces between three and ten litres of wastewater full of discarded barley and yeast . The mix is rich in protein but deficient in carbohydrates, especially compared with chicken feed. The Economist reports that the researchers found brewery waste was "happily consumed" by insects they tested, which "grew equally well on either food source." This suggests the possibility that other plentiful and protein-rich food wastes could also become "reasonable targets for nutrient recycling by insects," including waste from other fermentation industries (like bioethanol), slaughterhouses, and sugar-beet waste. Thanks to Slashdot reader echo123 for sharing the article.

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