It might seem like the start of a horror film, but hidden beneath railway arches in London, only 500 yards from The Shard, 11 million insects are being quietly bred.
While most Britons would view a sea of writhing maggots or swarms of flies in the heart of the city as a matter for pest control, entomologists believe that they could be the future of farm food.
Feeding insects to pigs and chickens could slash the need to import soy, the planting of which causes worrying deforestation of the rainforests, while also using huge amounts of food waste produced by supermarkets, breweries and farms.
Insects are eaten by animals in the wild and there is evidence that moving to a more natural diet improves behaviour, making livestock less aggressive than those raised on soy.
At Entocycle in London Bridge, scientists are researching the perfect food and conditions to keep soldier flies happy so they can breed successfully, and they hope to roll out their automated technology to farms across Britain.
“We’ve tested brewery waste, bakery waste, fruit and vegetable waste, household waste, supermarket waste, and we find they like a blend,” said Keiran Olivares Whitaker, the founder and chief executive of Entocycle.
“Pepperoni pizzas are absolutely fantastic, as well as brewers’ grains and pig manure.
“It makes sense to feed insects to insectivores. There is a reason that we use flies to catch fish, because that is what a lot of animals eat in the wild.”
Britain currently imports 80 to 90 per cent of its animal protein feeds, leaving farmers at the mercy of world events.
Prices rocketed when container ship Ever Given became stuck in the Suez Canal in 2021, and flooding in Brazil has seen soy crops fail, pushing up prices for farmers and consumers.
Under the new plans, farmers could set up insect breeding facilities on site and recycle their agricultural waste by feeding it to the flies.
The larvae produce large amounts of heat when they are growing, which can also be used to keep the flies warm, cutting energy costs.
A new report by Frontier Economics commissioned by the Circular Food Systems think tank suggests that the insect-farming industry could be worth up to £170 million and transform more than 3.1 million tonnes of waste into productive material.
Aruna Bahia of Circular Food Systems said: “If we actually want to do something about feed imports, what we need to do is look at the alternatives. And the most plausible alternative out there is insect-based feed.
“There are many benefits of insect base feed, it promotes better animal welfare, better gut health, lower vet fees for anyone using those feed because it’s a natural product and it’s what they would eat naturally.
“People who are doing trials have said that animals are displaying more natural behaviour and less aggressive behaviour.”
Experiments on monkeys have shown that soy diets increase aggression by up to 200 per cent.
Experts are now calling on the Government to speed up legislation that will allow insects to be fed to animals.
In 2017, Britain and the European Union agreed that insects could be fed to fish, but rules to expand the legislation to other animals did not pass before Brexit, which means that although the practice is allowed in Europe, it is still banned in the UK.
At Enorm, a Danish biofactory that is one of the largest black soldier fly-rearing facilities in Europe, the company has scaled up its facility to allow production per square metre 2,200 times greater than the average yield for soy.
The entire breeding cycle of the black soldier fly takes about 38 days, meaning a quick turnover compared with soy, which takes between 100 and 130 days.
It is estimated that insects could provide more than 150,000 tons of food a year in Britain currently, and expand to half a million tons within the next two decades.
Bob Gordon of the Zero Carbon Forum – whose members include Nando’s, KFC and Greene King – said: “Our industry’s heavy reliance on soy is simply unsustainable. Change is necessary to facilitate a thriving food industry, support UK food security and play our part in saving the rainforest.”
The Entocycle centre in London has already developed AI, computer vision and robotic technologies to help scale up insect farming, which could move quickly if legislation is changed in the coming months.
