Black Soldier Fly (Hermetia illucens) larvae-meal as an example for a new feed ingredients’ class in aquaculture diets

Summary

Regarding the growing demand for fishmeal, soybean meal and other feed ingredients in livestock feeding and especially in aquaculture, alternative protein carriers are an increasing concern of the animal feed industry. Beside the possibility to use animal by-products of non-ruminant origin, such as blood- and meat-meals in aquafeeds - according to the EU-regulation (EC) 56/2013 - the use of insect-based feed ingredients is progressively discussed among fish-feed producers, scientists and policy makers.Thus the possibility of mass-rearing flies on organic substrates was rediscovered. The black soldier fly, BSF (Hermetia illucens) occurring in tropical and subtropical countries all over the world including the Mediterranean states and European countries north of the alps proved to be an ideal candidate (Bondary et al. 1981; St-Hilaire et al. 2007 ). This organism can be reared on a wide range of organic (waste)-material which is currently deposited or burned or used in biogas plants in the best case. The developing stages of the fly can use the potential of this waste-material and reduce the volume of those substrates by up to 50%, producing biomass with a protein content of about 42% and a fat content of up to 35 % (Sheppard et al., 1994, Stamer et al. 2007). The suitability of the Hermetia pre-pupae meal as a protein source in feedstuff had been proven in poultry and pigs and also in warm water fish species (i.e. channel catfish and tilapia) (Bondari, Sheppard, 1981; Hale, 1973; Newton et al., 1977). For carnivorous cold water fish species (e.g. Salmonidae, Scophthalmidae) only limited data is available regarding the use of insect meals instead of fish meal (Kroeckel et al. 2012; St-Hilaire et al. 2007). The present study shows results of a feeding-trial on rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) fed with two BSF-larvae meal containing diets.