New on the menu: the mealworm

jenniferruffalo

Upon entering, the stench hits your throat right away. A musty, sour smell – even a mouth mask can’t compete with that. But the millions of mealworms that have been cultivated since the beginning of this year in this business building, just outside the center of Zwolle, taste no less, says Wouter Simons. Grinning from behind his desk, the 44-year-old grower fishes a dried worm from a plastic box. Downstairs in the building, workers drill and hammer themselves around. They are putting the finishing touches on what should become one of the largest mealworm farms in the Netherlands. “Taste?”

Newcomer to the European menu: the mealworm. Larf of the Tenebrio molitor, the flour beetle. Last week, 27 EU member states voted in favor of the European Commission’s proposal to allow mealworms as food. The last bureaucratic actions will be carried out in the coming weeks. After that, the animal, as the first insect in Europe, may be officially sold for food production in Europe. Grasshoppers and crickets are soon to follow, reportedly.

This is not an earth-shaking change. In the Netherlands, the sale of mealworms has turned a blind eye in recent years. But now that it is really allowed, says Simons, more producers will breed the bugs and prices will fall. “I’m expecting one tree. ”

Breeding area

The production of meat has been under discussion for some time – due to animal suffering, the large amount of space taken and environmental damage. The mealworm, like many other insects, is full of protein and is thus a potential meat substitute. You can make anything from mealworms, says Simons. Pasta, burgers. You can also put them in the salad, he says, instead of nuts.

Simons slides open the door of the ‘delivery room’. Buzzing fans, fluorescent lighting, the thermometer reads 27 degrees. He walks to a shelving unit with dozens of plastic bins. In each container, thousands of mealworms swarm among plant foods – especially carrots, wheat bran and beet pulp. The healthier the animal eats, the more protein the mealworm contains.

We do not need to cut forests for larvae

Carola Schouten minister

Simons points to the breeding area, a number of trays stacked on top of each other. A beetle lays about seven eggs every day for 35 days. After ten weeks such an egg has grown into mealworm. When the animal continues to grow, it becomes a beetle. But Simons does not want that. The fully grown mealworms are sieved from the trays and placed in a refrigerator, which stops growth and puts them into “hibernation”. They are then sold – unconsciously – to a processor, who blanches the bugs in a pressure cooker at 75 degrees Celsius and can then use them to produce burgers, for example.

That is not a happy death, Simons admits. For a moment he weighs his words carefully. “Animal activists” criticize him for producing mealworms. But the other option is freezing, says Simons, which makes dying slow.

The cabinet is also interested in the mealworm. It wants to use insects as an environmentally friendly alternative in animal feed. Animal feed is currently mainly made from soy from Argentina and Brazil. Their transport is extremely polluting and (tropical) forests are being cut down for the cultivation of soybeans. Two years ago, Minister Carola Schouten (Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality, ChristenUnie), when visiting a large nursery of fly larvae, showed that she has set her sights on insect farming. “I think the insect as a production animal has a promising future,” said Schouten.

But European legislation still stands in the way. After the mad cow disease in the late 1990s, when cows became ill from food with animal remains, the rules in Europe have been tightened. “I think Europe should remove that obstacle quickly,” said Schouten. “For larvae we don’t have to cut down forests or empty seas.” Two years ago, the Dutch Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority stated in a study that “insects can be used safely in animal feed.”

Environmental tax

Soy has a huge ‘footprint’ on the world, says grower Simons. Mealworms are a lot smaller. “You can grow a kilo of mealworms on half a square meter.”

Is mealworm a solution to the animal feed problem? And better for the environment? Dennis Oonincx, researcher at Wageningen University and Research, studied this. He compared the environmental impact of the mealworm with that of milk, pork, beef and chicken production. He looked at land and energy use and the emissions per kilo of protein for pigs, beef, chicken and mealworm.

The mealworms, grown in a former mushroom farm, needed comparatively much less space than pigs, but the energy consumption was practically the same. Mealworms, Oonincx found, thrive in heat, which takes energy.

In Zwolle, Simons does everything to create the ideal climate. He put millions of euros into the building with the help of investors. For example, an efficient heating system has been built into the incubator, and the walls in the cultivation areas are better insulated “than what you and I have at home,” says Simons. He currently produces small quantities of mealworms, but when his business is running at full capacity, he hopes to produce around 15 tons per week.

If it is up to researcher Dennis Oonincx, mealworms are only used for human food. “Why would you feed a product that is fine for humans to animals?”

https://netherlandsnewslive.com/new-on-the-menu-the-mealworm/152011/