Environmental Impact of the Production of Mealworms as a Protein Source for Humans – A Life Cycle Assessment

By D. Oonincx, I. D. de Boer. PLoS ONE, 2012

849 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The demand for animal protein is expected to rise by 70–80% between 2012 and 2050, while the current animal production sector already causes major environmental degradation. Edible insects are suggested as a more sustainable source of animal protein. However, few experimental data regarding environmental impact of insect production are available. Therefore, a lifecycle assessment for mealworm production was conducted, in which greenhouse gas production, energy use and land use were quantified and compared to conventional sources of animal protein. Production of one kg of edible protein from milk, chicken, pork or beef result in higher greenhouse gas emissions, require similar amounts of energy and require much more land. This study demonstrates that mealworms should be considered a more sustainable source of edible protein.

Subfields: Ecology, Food Science, Insect Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/490e84842b4c32e2887ec6401e9ade9a10106750

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Citations in the corpus

Review of Black Soldier Fly (Hermetia illucens) as Animal Feed and Human Food (2017, background): “Industrial-scale insect farms need less water and land space than pasture [35], can have a lower water footprint per gram of protein than any conventional livestock or even milk and eggs [36,37], and some insect species can even consume organic waste and side-streams [29,31].”
Feed Conversion, Survival and Development, and Composition of Four Insect Species on Diets Composed of Food By-Products (2015, background): “In some rearing facilities, this species is provided with carrot as a source of water [8].”
Food Wastes as a Potential new Source for Edible Insect Mass Production for Food and Feed: A review (2019, background): “In the near future, demand for animal-based food protein is expected to increase by up to 70% [10] due to exponential growth in the global population, which is predicted to reach 9 billion by 2050 [3,8].”