Maggot meal has a minimum crude protein content of 500 g/kg and a maximum crude fibre content of 130 g/kg and animals don’t complain.

For most people, flies seem to be creatures from hell. Their obvious dirty habits – moving from waste products to humans – made them our sworn enemies, but perceptions are changing. The offspring of flies are quite useful. The larvae of these controversial insects help to convert harmful natural waste products into resources that are extremely useful especially in agriculture.

    This is just the first level of usefulness. Recently, a second level was discovered: The commercial application of the housefly larvae in the animal feed industry for the production of a high protein source. Protein is a very important food component for humans and animals, but it is rapidly becoming extremely expensive to produce.

    Protein sources such as fish meal, blood meal and bone meal are becoming more unpopular due to the concerns about the heavy footprint it can leave on nature and the concerns about diseases that may arise from feeding animal products to animals.

    Another issue with protein for human consumption is that animal production is seen as a big culprit in the contribution to climate change due to the emission of greenhouse gasses like methane, CO² and N²O. Therefore, any attempt by the industry to gain positive credits will help to reduce the bad rap. If we can use two of the harmful by-products of animal production – animal waste and flies –  to produce one of the most important raw materials in the production of commercial animals, it will be very appealing in our day and age.

    Chickens and fish are natural insect eaters and fly-larvae are regarded as a delicatessen by these animals. Why not produce insect larvae on a great scale to feed it to them? When one kilogram of fly eggs can turn into 380 kg of larvae in 3 days and dried into 76 kg of protein, you have a business!

A simple solution

The experimental process behind this brilliant thinking dates back to 1969 when the harvesting of pupae was more popular since it was believed to be easier. The issues have since been overcome and the economic viability became more appealing.

    In 2010, the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa engaged in research with laboratory based animal trials on broiler chickens. The first academic publications followed suit. Common houseflies, black soldier flies and blowflies, which consume most forms of organic waste seem to be the best candidates in this process. Houseflies are a common species worldwide and are NOT difficult to find.

    The process is quite simple: Capture a lot of flies, let the creatures lay eggs and cover it with almost any form of animal waste to stimulate hatching. Extract the larvae, dry it, mill it into meal and mix it into your feed rations.

    According to the literature, houseflies have a five day life cycle. Under natural conditions, they can lay 500 to 600 eggs, which will hatch after eight to twelve hours. The larval stage lasts about five days and, thereafter, the pupal stage lasts four to five days. Under controlled conditions the picture looks much more impressive. With good managemment, a fly can lay

2 000 eggs and the ten day larvae-to-pupal phase can be reduced to six days. The optimal hatching condition is a temperature above 25 °C with a moist environment.

    Flies prefer to lay their eggs in moist substrates of decaying organic matter on which the maggots feed. An unbelievable variety of raw mate-rials can be used. A fly farmer cannot complain that he cannot get access to any of the following: Poultry manure is regarded as the favourite, but animal offal, rotten fruit, pig manure, cattle blood, wheat bran, cattle gut and rumen content, fish guts and a mixture of egg and hatchery waste are used. Uneaten food from restaurants and hotels, out-of-date food from supermarkets and abattoir waste can be used by the maggot farmer closer to the city.

The buckets filled with fly eggs and animal waste are producing 225 tons of MagMeal per month.

Flies for Africa

Africa is one of the leaders in the field of maggot meal production. In 2013, a maggot meal demonstration research plant was opened in Kenya. The big year was in 2014 when product licenses to produce maggot meal were granted by the Department of Agriculture in South Africa. In the same year the United Nations backed Innovation Prize for Africa was awarded to a maggot meal producer. The prize winner, AgriProtein, opened a 9 000 square metre, undercover maggot farm near Cape Town. Today, their monthly output is 225 tons of ‘Magmeal’ – the name of their brand.

    “The product is well accepted as a sustainable alternative to fishmeal – there is more demand than supply of protein in general with a growing po-pulation,” says Jason Drew, co-founder and director of AgriProtein. “We are looking at returns on investment in the mid-twenties,” he says. “We aim to undercut the cost of fishmeal by about 15 percent.”

    Another two farms are still undergoing environmental impact studies and will be 1,8 times larger than the first one. The farms will take in 110 tons of organic waste per month as a feed source for the larvae. To secure the continuation of the process, three to four percent of the flies will complete their life cycle to maintain the farm’s insect supply.

    Plants are also being built in the USA, Cambodia, Chile, Indonesia, and Europe. The European Union still has some issues regarding legislation. “Currently we can produce and sell maggot meal (in Europe), but once it is dried (processed) it can only be used in pet feeds. Enabling legislation is expected in 2017,” Jason says. His vision is that ten international factories will be up and running in 2020 to start the revolution in sustainable animal protein production.

    In Europe there is another legal technicality that needs time to be resolved. No animals, including insects, are currently allowed to be slaughtered (processed) on a farm. Hopefully there will be clarity on this matter in the nearby future.

    Luckily, Africa is not hampered by this kind of red tape, or at least not in the foreseeable future. Since maggot meal has the ideal amino acid profile for monogastric animals, the target market is the pork, fish and poultry industries. Maggot meal is also better than soy as animal feed and it doesn’t compete with human food at ALL!

    AgriProtein also manufactures Omega 6 rich MagOil, which is used in pet and pig feed. They also produce Magsoil for organic farmers as well as whole dried larvae for pet food. 

    “Magmeal is a natural and sustainable feed for fish and chicken, and in time it will be considered normal to recycle our waste nutrients into useable protein. In a food constrained future, we need to innovate to feed our planet sustainably,” Jason Drew said.

AgriProtein means business with the neat rows and rows of cages filled with flies.

Tonnes and tonnes of larvae are slowly sent through the drying process on a conveyer belt.

Watch the YouTube-video where Jason Drew tells the story of his revolutionary idea behind maggot meal to a Tedx audience. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxeuQtFbwZo