Animal

Insects

Although some consumers have yet to get used to the idea, more than 2000 different types of insects are already eaten worldwide. These are used in meat substitutes in the form of cutlets, nuggets or burgers and sold dried.

The advantage of using insects as an alternative protein is that breeding insects has a lower environmental impact compared to ordinary proteins. This has various reasons, such as low water consumption and the fact that residual waste can be used as food for insects. The amount of nutritions in an insect varies greatly per species.

The five most common insect species at the time for breeding are: Mealworms, Buffalo Worms, Black Soldier Fly, Crickets and Grasshoppers.

Risks

At the moment, there are still a number of restrictions from the EU for the use of insects in animal feed. Since insects are animals and to prevent a new BSE (mad cow disease) crisis, the use of meat and bone meal is not allowed. 

The Bureau for Risk Assessment & Research (BuRO), part of the Netherlands Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority (NVWA), has conducted research into the use of larvae of the black soldier fly, larvae of the housefly and mealworms as an alternative protein source

These results were positive. Based on this study, BuRO advises the Dutch minister of agriculture, nature and food quality to use this risk assessment as a basis for proposals for further amendments to European legislation. This paves the way for a wider application of the use of insects in the feed and pet food sector.

Analysis

NutriControl can analyze your animal proteins for nutritional value, food safety (microbiological and contaminants), amino acids, vitamins and digestibility. If you are looking for a specific analysis for your animal proteins, you can always contact us or take a look at our analysis overview page.

Portal

Our digital customer portal has been developed together with the users. This way it has become a useful tool for your quality department. Within the portal there are a few tricks that can help improve your quality control.

You can make templates for returning analysis. With this you can register your samples faster and reduce the change of human error. This can save your quality department time and energy. There is also an option to set your personal target values,  this makes checking your results easier. You can see in an instant which samples are not within your target.