Housefly could save the world

The Housefly (Musca domestica), is viewed by humans as  a pest. Often seen on garbage heaps, pit toilets, sewers, dumps, feeding on faecal matter, discharges from wounds, and moist, decaying matter, they are seen as carriers and transmitters of at least 65 diseases to humans.

However, in recent times, the housefly has proved to be useful after all, thanks to the research work of Mr. Jason Drew, co-founder of AgriProteinTechnologies and his team, have come up with an award-winning innovation. Drew, described as a passionate environmentalist and visionary, tells Vanguard Learning how the housefly could save the world.


Excerpts:

It is a fact that by 2050, world population would have increased by one third leading to rise in food demand, hence the need for new ways to sustain food supply and the housefly may be a cheaper and more sustainable source, according to Jason Drew.

“It is not just our human food waste – from supermarkets and food processing businesses – discarding unsightly but perfectly good apples and oranges or out-of- date but edible foods.  It goes much further – it takes as much land, diesel, water and our precious seas to make the bits of a chicken that we eat as the bits we throw away. This waste is as full of valuable nutrients as the bits we eat. Our manure – both animal and human – is also a key source of valuable nutrients. Most animals only take in a small percentage of the nutrients that pass through them – in nature this is recycled.”

Motivation:

According to Drew, the idea for the research came from his observatiopn of nature. “An animal would drop its manure on the field or die in the bush and nature would recycle the waste nutrients using insects. A fly would lay its eggs on the waste, the eggs would hatch into larvae and birds and fish would eat many of those larvae or flies – recycling the nutrients – as well as cleaning up the bio-hazard.  It is a case of horses for courses or rather flies for waste. Each species of fly and its larvae are naturally adapted to different types of waste.”

On observing all these, the entrepreneur in Jason went to work.

“A few years ago, I realised that this natural process could form the heart of a new business. I decided to industrialise fly farming. We take waste nutrients from slaughterhouses – blood and guts – and feed this to the eggs laid by our fly breeding stock. These eggs hatch into larvae (maggots) and grow at an enormous rate once you take away the environmental factors that stop this happening in nature.”

Fishmeal vs  maggots:

Comparing the two protein sources for animal feed, Jason noted that “nearly one third of the fish we take from our seas – about 50 million tonnes every year, is used in industrial agricultural and pet food industries and we dispose of hundreds of millions of tonnes of nutrient-rich waste. It takes over 2.3kg of marine caught fish to make 1kg of farmed fish whereas 1kg of fly eggs turns into about 400kg of fly larvae in 72 hours.

“Larvae are what free range chickens in fields and fish in streams eat as part of their natural diet. This natural source of protein has been increasingly replaced in our industrial farming operations with the more readily available fishmeal. The chemical composition of fishmeal is almost exactly the same as that of fly larvae – which is why it was chosen as a substitute.”

With the use of flies,  Mr. Drew and his team have been able to kill two birds with one stone – cleans up our waste nutrients and provides food for the future. “Some countries have perfected the art of recycling glass, papers, plastics, metals, water etc. in a bid to save the planet. According to the European Commission, in 2006, estimated food waste was 89.3 million tonnes which released 169.7 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent into the atmosphere. Drew, therefore, believes that “creating and discarding nutrients in the form of sewage, manure and abattoir blood has a far higher environmental impact. When we start to recycle these, we will be truly on the path to some sustainability for our planet. As the old Yorkshire saying goes – where there is muck, there is money – and sustainability!”

Drew who takes exception to flies being called pests, says flies have played and will continue to play very important role in nature. “They are not pests but pioneers in our modern world. We should appreciate them for their fascinating history. Genghis Kahn, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the National Health Service have all used flies in war, space and medicine.”

Production:

“We copied nature and led the process of making protein from waste nutrients profitably, sustainably and on a large scale. We are already in production and we believe that we can produce Magmeal at scale for around $800 per tonne which compares favourably with fishmeal – which is currently around $1850 per tonne, and likely to rise unless the oceans can be better managed.

“Last May, AgriProtein launched domestic recycling kit so that householders and rural small scale farmers can sustainably feed their chickens and pond fish.”

The company is already producing and selling larvae – dried and packaged as Magmeal. “Every ton of Magmeal we make and sell is a ton of fish we don’t have to take from our seas,” says Drew who believes the business will lead to a new global industry.