Wm Morrison uses insects to feed chickens

Supermarket chain Wm Morrison is replacing soya-based chicken feed with insects to produce carbon neutral free range eggs, as part of its efforts to reduce CO 2 emissions from its agricultural supply chains.

Cambridge's start-up Better Origin will provide insect mini farms for feed to 10 egg suppliers to the UK's fourth largest grocer, the retailer said on Wednesday.

Automated farms housed in shipping containers are run on artificial intelligence and will produce insects fed on waste from Morrisons fruit and vegetable processing site in Yorkshire in a circular agriculture scheme.

The supplementary diet of British beans, peas and sunflower seeds will be fed to the 320,000 free-range hens on the 10 farms. Morrisons is hoping to sell its carbon neutral eggs laid by insect-feeding chickens next year, although the pricing has yet to be determined.

Insects are a natural feed for chickens, but rearing the birds indoors means that the bulk of the feed comes from soyabeans and grains. Environmental campaigners have linked soyabeans in chicken feed to Amazon deforestation and the destruction of biodiversity hotspots in Brazil.

According to the British Free Range Egg Producers Association, the largest contributor to emissions on a free range egg farm is buy-in feed, which typically makes up more than 85 per cent of an egg's carbon footprint.

Morrisons announcement came as Stonegate Farmers launched its carbon neutral Respectful eggs in J Sainsbury stores in Wiltshire last month. The hens are a high-productivity breed, which is given soya-free feed made of locally milled field beans, such as lupins, mung beans and peas.

Sophie Throup, head of agriculture at Morrisons, said the supermarket chain had pledged to be supplied by net zero British farms by the year 2030. The retailer recently launched a seaweed feed project for cows to reduce methane emissions, and she said that the retailer's egg farmers had suggested the use of insects to cut down the amount of soya fed to hens.

Insects could be the future of egg farming, she said. Reducing soya from livestock feed is one of the challenges for farms needing to reduce their carbon footprint and we wanted to help find a solution. Fotis Fotiadis, chief executive of Better Origin, said he intended to roll out the insect project across all Morrisons 60 egg farms, which would reduce just over 35,000 tons of CO2 a year, equal to emission reductions of 16,500 cars. Fotiadis said that better origins on-site insect farms reduced transportation needs and maintained the nutrition of black soldier fly larvae fed to the hens.

Studies have shown that feeding insects, rich in essential proteins and other nutrients, to chickens was beneficial for the health of chickens while reducing behavioural problems.

Insects can replace grains, soyabeans, fish and vegetable oils in the pellets fed to animals and fish, providing essential proteins and other nutrients. They can be raised on organic agricultural waste and minimal water.

In September of this year, the EU approved the use of insect proteins in poultry and pig feed, on top of use as fish feed. The food safety regulators of the EU said at the beginning of this year that the yellow mealworm was safe for human consumption, although the use of insects in human food in the west remains a niche area.