Working with nature to help feed the world
AgriProtein uses organic waste to farm flies, whose larvae are turned into high-protein meal for animals, writes Sue Grant-Marshall
Jason Drew, CEO of AgriProtein, the first and largest commercial-scale insect meal producer in the world, is a man in a hurry. He has a planet to save and he’s using pesky flies to do so. Every day, at least 25,000 people die of starvation and the seas will soon be depleted of fish. Canada’s great fishing industry has already collapsed and Britain’s is threatened. People all over the globe aren’t getting enough protein to survive, let alone thrive. Some years ago, the entrepreneurial Drew, author of two books on the perilous state of the environment, saw a huge pool of blood with a thick cloud of flies hovering over it outside a chicken slaughterhouse near Stellenbosch. Its manager told Drew that a Stellenbosch University professor had told him that flies could be used to recycle the waste blood to make useable protein. Drew knew that in nature, both chicken and stream-inhabiting fish eat flies, not the fishmeal they are fed by humans. Trawlers produce fishmeal "in one of the most d...
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