UK trials dog food made from insects

UK trials dog food made from insects

The UK’s first dog food made from insects went on sale last week, with manufacturers saying it could help reduce the environmental damage caused by the massive volumes of meat routinely fed to dogs and cats. Globally, pets consume about 20% of the world’s meat and fish, a number set to rise with the trend for consumers to feed them human-grade meat. Pet food is also estimated to be responsible for a quarter of the environmental impacts of meat production in terms of use of land, water, fossil fuels, phosphates and pesticides. Insects provide a relatively high 40% of the protein in the new product from startup Yora. They are dried and ground with oats, potato and ‘natural botanicals’. The current version comes in the form of dried pellets, although Yora says it hopes to launch a ‘wet’ version later in the year. The insects in Yora’s dog food are the larvae of black soldier flies (Hermetia illucens) which are reared by protein nutrient company Protix in Eindhoven in the Netherlands.