Insects and insect-derived products have been in the European market since about 2010, however scaling up the insect value chain in Europe is progressing at a relative slow pace. The aim of the SUSINCHAIN project is to overcome the remaining barriers for increasing the economic viability of the insect value chain and opening markets. This will be done by combining forces in a comprehensive multi-actor consortium with 18 industry partners and 17 academic partners. SUSINCHAIN considers the entire insect value chain from farm (insect rearing) to fork (insect consumption) based on Black Soldier Fly, Housefly, Mealworm and Crickets. The SUSINCHAIN concept is based on performing all activities needed (innovations, testing, demonstrating, sharing knowledge) to overcome the most important hurdles for scaling up the European insect value chain. Practical experience of consortium industry partners in addressing supply-side barriers as well as related risk management strategies will be evaluated and best practices will be elaborated by the use of living labs. Insect rearing innovations will be focused on organic side streams of vegetable origin that cannot be used directly as animal feed. For improving economic viability, possibilities for marketing of rearing by-products will be evaluated and strategies to avoid insect diseases will be developed. Transport, storage and processing technologies for insects will be optimised and demonstrated at large scale. Microwave and Radio Frequency drying, High Moisture Extrusion and protein recovery from fresh larvae by using enzymatic pre-treatment combined with continuous tricanter centrifugation will be validated and demonstrated. Controlled atmosphere packaging and cold atmosphere preservation for storage and transport of living insects will also be tested. The digestibility of insect meals produced by different processing methods will be assessed and insect meals will be included in feed formulae for large-scale level commercial diets to test optimal inclusion levels to maintain or increase livestock performance and health. Insect based food products will be designed and developed suitable for the domestic preparation of regular dinner meals. The microbiological, chemical and allergenic safety of insects and derived products will be addressed along the entire chain. Hygiene codes, HACCP protocols, and guidelines for safe insect production will be created and distributed among the supply chain actors. Furthermore, a decision support system will be developed to ensure the sustainable growth of the insect value chain in Europe, in addition to the stakeholder’s platform provided within the context of the project in order to connect and receive valuable inputs from the relevant actors.

Chongrui Yang1, Shiteng Ma1, Minmin Cai1, Longyu Zheng1, Jeffery K. Tomberlin2, Ziniu Yu1, Jibin Zhang1* 1State Key Laboratory of Agricultural Microbiology, National Engineering Research Centre of Microbial Pesticides, College of Life Science and Technology, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, 430070, China 2Department of Entomology, Texas A&M University,USA *Corresponding author e-mail address: zhangjb@mail.hzau.edu.cn (J. Zhang) Abstract Antibiotics are widely used in livestock and poultry farming because of their unique ability to inhibit and kill pathogens, but it is difficult for animals to degrade them. Most antibiotics will be excreted with livestock and poultry. Excretion of manure containing antibiotics into the environment without treatment can pose a significant threat to ecosystems and public health. Although traditional compost can remove some antibiotics, it takes a long time and is enriched with a large number of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and resistance genes. In this paper, we studied the degradation effect of ciprofloxacin (CIP) by black soldier fly larvae (BSFL) in artificial feed. The results showed that the degradation rate of CIP was detected to be 85.48% artificial feed, which was four folds that of the control. Then the BSFL intestinal microbe role in CIP degradation was explored. Five ciprofloxacin-resistant bacteria were isolated from the gut of the BSFL, and identified by morphology and molecular biology as BSFLG-CIP1 (Klebsiella Pneumoniae), BSFLG-CIP2 (Trichosporon asahii), BSFLG-CIP3 (Geotrichum sp.), BSFLG-CIP4 (Pichia kudriavzevii) and BSFLG-CIP5 (Proteus mirabilis), in which BSFG-CIP1 and BSFLG-CIP5 have degradation rate of CIP of 98.22% and 97.83%, respectively. However, their growth has also been affected by the concentration of CIP. In the process of using the sterile BSFL system to research the degradation of ciprofloxacin by BSFL and intestinal microbes, the degradation rate of CIP by sterile BSFL was 21.76%. After the addition of intestinal microbes, the degradation rate of CIP obviously improved indicated that the gut microbes play an important role in the degradation process of ciprofloxacin. Seven kinds of possible metabolites were identified by in vitro degradation of CIP by BSFL intestinal microbes, and their metabolic pathways were preliminarily inferred.

Multiple veterinary pharmaceuticals, including veterinary antibiotics (VAs), are extensively applied worldwide as growth promoters and therapeutic agents in livestock production. The widespread use and continuous release of VAs into the environment accelerates the development of antibiotic-resistant microbial populations and facilitates the maintenance of the resistance at high levels. Several studies explored that manure is a reservoir of antimicrobial-resistant bacteria and even when livestock is not administered with antibiotics, a background level of resistance exists in feces, which can fluctuate based on feed ingredients in animal diets. Compared to conventional composting, black soldier fly (BSF) larvae Hermetia illucens offer a promising alternative for the biodegradation of animal manure. As an ecological decomposer, BSF larvae are often exposed to relatively high concentrations of harmful microorganisms, such a bacteria, and fungi. Recently, many reports have identified that the presence of specific microflora in the insect gut play an important role in the host immune system, which consequently prevents colonization of pathogens, and hence is involved in maintaining host health. Thus, the potential inactivation of pathogens by the BSF larvae microbiome complex could be useful in the manure sanitization. The ability and mechanisms of BSF larvae associated intestinal microbes to degrade ARGs were investigated in this study. The goal of the presented project was to study the attenuation of selected ARGs during BSF larvae-composting and conventional composting. The relative abundances of nine ARGs conferring sulphonamides resistance (sul1, sul2 and sul3) and MLSB resistance (ermA, ermB, ermC, ermF, ermT, and ermX) were determined with established methods of real-time PCR. The result of this study contributes to understanding the effects of BSF larvae on the occurrence of ARGs in cattle manure. The understanding of how BSF larvae influence the degradation and presence of ARGs during manure processing can significantly help to mitigate their spread in the environment. This project was supported by GJ19-11782Y.

Within Ontario alone, approximately 3.7 million tonnes of organic food waste are generated yearly. This waste includes food scraps, wasted food and greenhouse wastes such as leaves, plant stems, and fruits. More than 55% of this waste is generated by the residential and municipal sectors and most of it is transported to landfills for composting each year. The use of landfills as a method of waste management is not sustainable. It adds strain to the environment by releasing harmful greenhouse gases and demands landfill space. It is projected that based on the current trends in economic growth, more than 16 landfills will be required by 2050 in Ontario if more progress is not made to reduce the use of landfills for organic waste disposal. Currently, the protocols set by the Ontario government include educational tools to support waste prevention strategies, safety guidelines to support the safe donation of excess food, and province ban of organic waste sent to disposal sites. While all these are strong protocols, there is a need to address methods that support recovery and converting food waste into valuable end products that could contribute to economic benefits (i.e. circular economy). The black soldier fly, Hermetia illucens Linnaeus (Diptera: Stratiomyidae) has been shown to reduce a range of waste, from all-vegetable to all-meat. The goal of this research was to examine the potential for H. illucens as a sustainable waste management method for municipal waste in the Windsor-Essex region by evaluating life-history traits, waste reduction efficiency and waste reduction index of larvae reared on municipal waste and chicken feed as a control. Treatments consisted of 150 4-day-old larvae fed either municipal waste or chicken feed every 2 days. When comparing across treatments larvae developed faster on chicken feed (P<0.05) and showed a higher waste reduction index (P<0.05). However, waste reduction efficiency was the same across treatments (P>0.05) and prepupae reared on municipal waste weighed more than those reared chicken feed (P<0.05). Data from this study shows that Hermetia illucens can be a suitable and sustainable waste management alternative. There were physiological trade-offs observed as a result of larval feeding on a heterogenous diet such as municipal waste.

As the need for high-quality and innovative chicken feed in Niger is increasing rapidly, the objective of this work was to investigate the potential of maggot production on locally available byproducts as a novel feed for poultry. Eight substrates (cow manure; cow rumen content; sorghum stem residue; millet glume; rice husk; brewer's grains; millet bran and wheat bran) were selected due to their open and easy access in the agricultural environment of Niamey. To test these monodiets, Musca domestica eggs were obtained from a M. domestica breeding unit set up at the university of Abdou Moumouni. Each diet (n = 3) was inoculated with 0.01 g of M. domestica eggs. On day 5, the larval biomass of each substrate was collected and weighed per replica as well as the weight of 20 maggots per substrate per replica. After extraction of the larvae, 30 g of final residue per replica was collected for biochemical analysis. Preliminary results showed that the fresh larval biomass is influenced by the type of substrate used. The maximum and minimum fresh biomass were obtained with millet bran (3.638gr ± 0.334) and ruminal content (2.242gr ± .0.077), respectively. As for the mean weight of the 20 larvae, it was found that wheat bran (0.549mg ± 0.043) allowed better larval development while ruminal content (0.272mg ± 0.021) allowed a relatively low larval weight gain. Preliminary nutritional analyses of maggots have shown that maggots raised on rice husks showed the highest protein content (42.46%) while those raised on millet bran only showed a protein content of 37.85%. Concerning the fat content, the maggots produced on wheat bran were the richer (20.84%) while those produced on brewer grains had lower lipid level (13.20%). These results indicate that plant-based materials seem to be the most suitable for the insect development and that millet bran, locally produced and available, could be a suitable candidate for rearing M. domestica in Niger. Other analyses are still in progress (i.e. fatty acid compositions) to evaluate the quality of the insects produced and their potential integration in chicken nutrition.Multi-ingredient diets are also planned in order to optimize the growing and potentially the nutritional value of this species.