A side dish of maggots with supermarket meat! Livestock to be fed larvae reared on cow and pig excrement in EU trial to meet rising demands for meat



EU plan to use protein-rich fly maggots instead of soya beans in animal feed

Waste products including spent grain from whisky-making could be used

Global demand for meat and dairy products is predicted to double by 2050

It is hardly the most appetising of prospects, but it could just be the only viable way to satisfy the ever-increasing global demand for meat.

A plan to feed animals with protein-rich maggots which have been reared on cow and pig excrement is currently being trialled by the EU.



Soya beans which are normally used in feed for animals such as chickens, pigs and fish, are in great demand so scientists and farmers have been searching for a cheap and viable alternatives.

Too much to stomach? A diagram explaining how maggots are being used in an EU trial to feed animals which then make it into the human food chain

Meat demand: An EU trial is underway to see if protein-rich maggots or larvae produced from flies bred on an industrial scale could be used in animal feed



The EU plan would see flies bred on an industrial scale using readily-available animal and vegetable waste, with the maggots, or larvae, which they create then being used for feed.

The type of waste product used would vary depending on the location of the 'fly farms' with sawdust and even used grain from the whisky distilling process being touted as possibilities.

With the rising population and changes in dietary habits, the demand for meat and dairy products is predicted to double by 2050, when there will be an estimated three billion extra mouths to feed.



Georg Melzer, a partner at Eutema Technology in Austria, a company involved in the project, told the Independent: 'What's used will depend on the area.

'In Scotland, if there are 10 whisky distilleries nearby it will use the grain fermented in the distillation process.

Tucking in: Soya beans which are normally used in feed for animals such as chickens, pigs and fish, are in great demand so scientists are looking for cheap and viable substitutes

'In Spain it might be pulp from a tomato field, while in a lot of places it will be a mixture of droppings, straw and sawdust you get on chicken farms.'

The Grant Bait fishing-bait farm in Roos, East Yorkshire has been tasked with finding the best way to produce maggots on an industrial scale using waste materials.

They will then be shipped to Ghent, in Belgium where the animal feed trials are being conducted. The project, which hopes to determine if the technique is feasible on a wide scale, is due to run for three years.

