Abstract
As part of the current climate change debate, concerns have been raised over the rapid expansion of soybean cultivation as the major protein source to feed animals for human consumption. At the same time, insect-based protein is rapidly emerging as an alternative protein source to animal-based protein, both as a potential substitute for soybean-based protein for the use in animal feed, and for direct human consumption. The assessment of climate impacts and market potentials of novel animal feed and food products related to such insect-based protein requires an assessment of their carbon footprints. This paper explores the extent to which insect protein could help to reduce the Global Warming Potential (GWP) associated with food consumption in Europe. The results from a quantitative review and scenario analyses provide two key insights. First, they support previous research suggesting that insect protein has the greatest potential to reduce the carbon footprints of European consumers, if insects are directly consumed as food. Second, they suggest not only that the use of insects as animal feed can substantially contribute to the sustainability of broiler production systems with regard to lowering GWP, but also that low-value side streams are key for improving this potential.
Highlights
In the face of increasing environmental, biodiversity and welfare concerns associated with traditional animal-based food production (Grunert et al, 2018; Bonnet et al, 2020; Bohnes and Laurent, 2021; Raven and Wagner, 2021), the search for new and alternative plant, insect and lab-based protein sources has accelerated (He et al, 2020; Santo et al, 2020; Kyriakopoulou et al, 2021)
We conduct a short and thematically focused literature review on the Global Warming Potential (GWP) values of broiler, insect, and soybean meal production from a variety of life cycle assessment (LCA) studies, to generate a data set for further analysis
By comparing the minimum (MIN.) GWP values for broiler produc tion in baseline scenario I and scenario II, we can see that switching to feeding broilers with insects that are fed with industrially composite feeds can reduce the GWP impact of broiler production to a lesser extent than if broilers were fed with conventionally produced soybean meal
Summary
In the face of increasing environmental, biodiversity and welfare concerns associated with traditional animal-based food production (Grunert et al, 2018; Bonnet et al, 2020; Bohnes and Laurent, 2021; Raven and Wagner, 2021), the search for new and alternative plant, insect and lab-based protein sources has accelerated (He et al, 2020; Santo et al, 2020; Kyriakopoulou et al, 2021) These protein sources have the potentials to replace traditional meat products designated for human consumption, and to direct the use of feeds in animal production towards more sustainable practices (Hawkey et al, 2021; Williams, 2021), and contribute through better exploitation of side streams towards a more sustainable circular economy (Ghinoi et al, 2020; Ojha et al, 2020).
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