Did your New Year’s resolution involve trying something new? How about eating bugs?
If you’re like most Americans, the answer is probably an emphatic “no!” (and likely accompanied by a disgusted face). But 2019 is likely to see an expansion of alternative proteins entering the market to compete with traditional proteins like beef. Though tiny, insects are one of those alternative proteins.
Insects and other crawlies are a regular source of protein to more than 2 billion people across the globe, with the glaring exception of the Western world. At least one “ranch” is trying to change that and introduce “entomophagy”—bug eating by humans—to the U.S.
The Rocky Mountain Micro Ranch (RMMR) looks nothing like what the word “ranch” suggests to cattle producers. It is a converted shipping container, sitting in the backyard of a small convenience store in one of the lower-income neighborhoods of the western outskirts of Denver, CO.
WLJ visited the ranch during a community outreach event in November 2018. During the event, participants got to tour the “ranch,” eat roasted mealworms and crickets, and sample savory pastries made with mealworms. There was even “cricket beer” available for those who purchased a drink ticket.
The “ranch”
“Insect farming sounds kind of crazy… but really, it’s just a form of indoor agriculture,” summarized Wendy Lu, founder of the RMMR.
RMMR mostly raises mealworms or “molitos”—the larva of the Tenebrio molitor species of the large darkling beetle family of flightless beetles—and a few crickets. The converted shipping container that is the “ranch” has been outfitted with a solar thermal heater, insulation, electricity to run the numerous humidifiers and fans, and a rack-and-tub system in which the mealworms are raised.
“This is, for all intents and purposes, a greenhouse but we’re raising animals instead of plants.”
Lu explained that all the alteration of the shipping container has been to keep the inside 75-80 degrees Fahrenheit and 80 percent humidity. The mealworms are raised in a rack-and-tub system that utilizes stacks of shallow tubs usually used to proof pizza dough. Each tub contains dried spent distillers grains and wheat bran as both food and nesting material for the subterranean larva.
Lu estimated that they can likely raise a maximum of 750,000 mealworms in their current container with its stacked rack-and-tub system. She, and then later RMMR’s “Bug Overload” (entomologist) Kyle Conrad, noted that they are trying to finance another shipping container to expand their operation.
“We’re looking for some venture capital,” explained Conrad. “But, being such a new industry, and a new idea, it’s hard to even approach venture capitalists and when we do they’re all, “Wait, you’re doing what? Show me your numbers. Now show me the history of numbers from other companies.’ But there is no other company.”
However, there is a potential obstacle to RMMR’s hopes of expansion. During the early-November 2018 event, Conrad told WLJ that they were in a zoning dispute with the City of Denver, which sees their operation as a commercial livestock operation and thereby not legal in their current location.
As livestock
As an insect, mealworms/darkling beetles have four life stages; egg, larva (mealworm), pupa, and adult beetle. From egg to adult breeding beetle, their lifecycle is about three months long. They spend most of their lives in the secondary larval.
RMMR harvests about 75 percent of their stock during the larval stage, allowing the other quarter of the stock to go on to pupate and develop into breeding adult beetles. Both Lu and Conrad admitted they don’t have any selection process at the moment, let alone selection criteria.
“It’s something that we need to work on,” Lu told WLJ. “There’s not a lot of literature like there would be for cattle or poultry. But it is something that needs to be done, absolutely.”
Conrad, who joined RMMR about two years ago, expanded on this, reporting that he’s started to see differences in the mealworms now compared to when he started. He also said he hopes to delve into researching their feed conversion ratio, calling that a key trait to select for. However, he voiced a familiar ranching complaint that stands in the way of expansion.
“Right now, it’s just me and 400,000 bugs and I just don’t have the manpower to track [feed conversion]. Hopefully we’re going to get more hands into the ranch and then I can step back and start doing some experiments on the side with our stock and try to drill into some of those ideals.”
Like cattle, mealworms and crickets have pests and diseases. Unfortunately for RMMR, “there’s no insect veterinarian” as Conrad put it.
“We’re trying to make an environment that we can cleanse as easily as possible just to keep the hygiene up in the environment,” Conrad explained.
“Really, after that, it’s a matter of keeping the bins they live in as clean as possible. Kind of hard to do since they are a subterranean animal, if you will, so I can make every bin clean between cohorts, but I can’t clean it while they’re growing.”
Conrad said the most obvious pest is spiders which directly attack the stock. Another beetle, the dermestid beetles (sometimes called carpet beetles), often invades the mealworm bins, but it is unclear if it is a pest competing for the mealworm’s food or a symbiotic species that provides a cleaning benefit. He expressed frustration at the lack of existing literature or research on the topic.
One area where there has been research, according to Conrad, is in terms of diseases mealworms can transmit to humans. He opined that RMMR—which sells its own stock and that of other companies from other countries, including “wild harvested” ants from China—is “being very safe” about potential disease transmission due to the processing of their mealworms. They are harvested by being put in the freezer for a few days, then roasted in a commercial kitchen.
Bugs as food
Proponents of entomophagy claim that insects are more sustainable than traditional livestock and this is one of the motivations behind RMMR. Lu and Conrad pointed to the spent brewer’s grains collected from local microbreweries as a way in which their insects are more sustainable. However, on matters of nutrition and feed conversion, they offered little information to back up claims of sustainability aside from the reduced arable land insects take up compared to traditional livestock.
Information on the nutritional value of insects varies wildly across the different species of insect consumed. Even within a single species, their diet can have a big impact on their nutritional profile.
One report conducted by South Korean researchers and published in the September 2012 issue of the Indian National Academy of Agricultural Science journal found that mealworms are 46.4 percent protein and 32.7 percent fat by volume, while the adult beetle is 63.9 percent protein and 7.6 percent fat. Wheat bran was the primary food stuff for the mealworms, with twice weekly offerings of cabbage, radish, and carrot for water.
This research also investigated the protein and fat content of the mealworm’s exuvium (shed skin) and excreta (solid waste). These were 32.9 percent and 3.6 percent, and 18.5 percent and 1.3 percent respectively.
Another report conducted by Swedish and Greek researchers and published in February 2016 on the online journal PLOSone, found that mealworms were 33 percent fat and 43 percent protein on a dry matter basis. These commercially-reared mealworms were fed organic wheat, wheat bran, and carrots.
Similarly, what little documentation exists on their feed conversion rates varies depending on their diet. One widely referenced piece of literature published in the September 2012 issue of the Annual Review of Entomology journal found that crickets have a feed conversion rate of 1.7 (1.7 kg of feed to 1 kg of liveweight) when the whole cricket is consumed. When the crickets’ chitin-dense legs are removed, improving palatability for humans, the feed conversion rate of feed to edible weight went to 2.
Regulations and market
In addition to all of the other areas of open-ended questions, the U.S. has basically no regulations on raising insects for food.
“The EU is a lot farther along in terms of food regulations,” Lu noted. “We work with a letter of advisement from the [Food and Drug Administration].”
Conrad added that, while there are no specific regulations on insects raised for human consumption in the U.S., the RMMR pulls from other small animal husbandry industries where possible. Other countries such as Canada and those in the European Union and parts of Asia, which have regulations, also serve as a model for U.S. operations.
Unfortunately for RMMR and any other U.S. efforts at raising insects for human consumption, these other countries produce a less expensive product.
“It’s still cheaper to buy cricket powder and fly it over here from Thailand than to buy it from anybody in the states,” Conrad said. “That’s because they’ve been doing it for more years, they have cheaper labor, XYZ. So, it’s really hard to break into the industry here.”
The most mainstream example of bug-based food here in the U.S. is likely “Chirps Chips” made with cricket flour. According to the company’s website, they source their crickets from farms “in North America and Thailand.”
On top of the lack of infrastructure and information for farming insects for human consumption, Conrad said a major impediment to the microindustry is public perception.
“I think a lot of perceptions of insects, unfortunately from our culture, have been focused on bugs are dirty, bugs are gross, bugs are icky,” he said. “It’s getting over that cultural hurdle that ‘bugs are bad.’”
Still, he expressed optimism on the potential growth of entomophagy, saying, “Because other places like Canada and Europe have been championing it, I have good feelings for the Western world.” — Kerry Halladay, WLJ editor
