by Gabriel Abrigonda | Resistome
Last February 2022, Ynsect, a French company, announced that they will be investing five million dollars in an industrial insect breeding facility as the world's first largest initiative in breeding beetle larvae, specifically yellow mealworms, Tenebrio mollitor, among other insects. The insect breeding facility will utilize genetic engineering to incorporate genes coding for novel traits such as high reproduction rate and feedstock conversion.
Meanwhile, its neighboring country, Switzerland, also aims to enhance insect breeding technologies. Switzerland’s Bühler Group developed the Insect Technology Center, which helps in setting up industrial breeding facilities for insect farming. They conduct production trials, feedstock evaluation, sample product development, and employee training. In France, Switzerland, and other developed countries, insect breeding is considered a major milestone contributing to attainment of food security.
However, in some countries, the production of insect breeding facilities may be an impending threat to environmentalists detesting genetic modification of organisms – may it be insects, animals, or plants. In April 2023, The Philippine Supreme Court issued a Writ of Kalikasan to stop the commercial release of genetically modified rice and eggplant as petitioned by Magsasaka at Siyentipiko para sa Pag-unlad ng Agrikultura (MASIKAP). The intention of this petition is beneficial to indigenous people and common farmers rendering the government or private companies responsible for any damage the technology may possess through the establishment of liability measures.
Nevertheless, the main purpose of creating these genetically engineered and modified products must not be neglected. As a saying by Andrew Smith, “People fear what they don’t understand and hate what they can’t conquer.” In this regard, the public’s complete turning away from these developments is a great loss of knowledge and a hindrance to hundreds of years of scientific progress.
Just in the country, several genetically modified products have been created in the past years. The Golden Rice was generated to fortify normal rice with vitamin A through a gene coding for beta-carotene sourced from corn, which can serve to prevent malnutrition among marginalized communities. The Bt eggplant contains the gene of Bacillus thuringiensis, which helps in controlling pests such as fruit borers and fruit flies. This helps reduce economic stress on farmers and environmental degradation due to less pesticide use. The digestive tract of fruit flies and their larvae contains the specific receptor of the Bt gene, enabling them to be toxic to insects and not to humans.
In relation to these advances, insect breeding aims to provide alternative sources of protein for people and provide inputs to agriculture such as fertilizers, feeds, and feed ingredients which will have a great impact on food security in the next decades. According to the World Resources Institute, it was estimated that there will be a 70% human calorie gap in 2050. Thus, an alternative source of sustainable protein production, which includes insect protein, is being considered to address this global issue, as supported by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Some scientists have been addressing these problems, with some researchers using black soldier flies, Hermetia illucens, as their chosen insect that could be utilized for human consumption. These scientists used genomic selection for breeding and selection of desirable traits. These black soldier flies are just among a number of insect species that are eyed for rich protein content that may help in the concern of food security.
Thus, while industrial insect breeding may be a technology ahead of its time, it is an inevitable course of future food production and a potential aid to the widening gap in food security and looming environmental crisis. Scrupulous regulation of insect farms, alongside extensive research on insect hybrids, would lead to a safe adoption of this technology to benefit the human race.
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