Protecting the environment through insect farming as a means to produce protein for use as livestock, poultry, and aquaculture feed

Securing protein for the approximate 10 billion humans expected to inhabit our planet by 2050 is a major priority for the global community. Evidence has accrued over the past 30 years that strongly supports and justifies the sustainable use of insects as a means to produce protein products as feed for pets, livestock, poultry, and aquacultured species. Researchers and entrepreneurs affiliated with universities and industries, respectively, from 18 nations distributed across North and South America, Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia contributed to the development of this article, which is an indication of the global interest on this topic. A brief overview of insects as feed for the aquaculture industry along with a review of the black soldier fly, Hermetia illucens (Diptera: Stratiomyidae), as a model for such systems is provided

Boundary strategies for Self-Organizing Migrating Algorithm analyzed using CEC'17 Benchmark

This paper is focused on the influence of boundary strategies for the popular swarm-intelligence based optimization algorithm: Self-organizing Migrating Algorithm (SOMA). A similar extensive study was already performed for the most famous representative of swarm-based algorithm, which is Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), and showed the importance of related research for other swarm-based techniques, like SOMA. The current CEC'17 benchmark suite is used for the performance comparison of the case studies, and the results are compared and tested for statistical significance using the Friedman Rank test. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020

PROteINSECT: Insects as a Sustainable Source of Protein

European awareness of the potential use of insects as a protein source for animal feed has grown rapidly in recent years. Interest has been driven by heavy European reliance on crop protein imports for feed, challenges associated with the increasing global demand for animal protein, and the recognition that certain insects can be grown at scale on relatively low value organic wastes. However, with limited historical use of insects as a protein source for feed in Europe, their use has, until recently, neither been required nor considered in European Union legislation. Here we describe how the European funded project PROteINSECT (www.proteinsect.eu) enabled scientists, insect farmers, communication experts, funding agencies, regulatory bodies and other stakeholders to collaborate to drive progress towards the safe and legal use of insect protein in animal feed. A 3-year research project, PROteINSECT investigated the potential use of dipteran larvae as a novel source of protein for feeding fish and monogastric livestock (pigs and poultry). Mounting scientific evidence, including that generated by PROteINSECT partners, building confidence in the safety, feasibility, and sustainability of commercial scale insect production, was met with a willingness of the regulatory authorities to begin to address the necessary legislative changes to enable the protein derived from certain insect species to be legally incorporated into feed. In the last year of the PROteINSECT project, clear evidence of progress emerged as changes in European legislation permitting the use of processed insect protein in aquaculture feed were anticipated to come into force in 2017