Dr. Marcel Dicke: Chickens see “them fly”

A project named InsectFeed was set up by the Wageningen University in The Netherlands, in order to investigate the options for using insects as an alternative feed ingredient for poultry. Funded by the Dutch government via the Dutch Research Council, Dr. Marcel Dicke, Professor of Entomology and Head of the Laboratory of Entomology at Wageningen University, is coordinating this project.

“The main question is: how can we develop a sustainable insect-based poultry value chain”, says Dr. Dicke.

>> “Although not mainstream yet, insects are on the Western menu in human nutrition already since 2014”, Dr. Dicke says. “So why shouldn’t that be possible in poultry nutrition either?”

For that reason the InsectFeed project came into practice. Among the stakeholders are the Universities of Wageningen and Groningen, research institutes, Rabobank, NGOs, and other parties.

“Poultry naturally eat insects, and from our research so far, we have noticed that broilers are very eager to eat fly larvae”, says Dr. Dicke.

So then the inclusion of fly larvae in their feed should also be feasible. The objective is to investigate the entire chain, from food waste and other organic residual materials on which insects are grown up till the consumer.

Currently we investigate housefly and black soldier fly. The latter particularly because of its resistance to