Feeding livestock and fish with insects could reduce the UK’s future soybean footprint by a factor of five, according to a new report commissioned by Tesco and WWF.

This study highlights what it calls “the great potential of insect farming” in supporting efforts to tackle the climate crisis.

The Future of Feed: WWF Roadmap for Accelerating Insect Proteins in UK Feed states that total demand for insect meals from the UK pig, poultry and salmon sectors will skyrocket to approximately 540,000 tonnes per year by 2050. Claims that there is a possibility. According to the report, 16,000 tonnes of fishmeal and 524,000 tonnes of soybeans have been exchanged, which is equivalent to Tesco UK’s entire 2018 soybean footprint.

The report reveals that about 150,000 hectares of land are needed to produce this amount of soybeans annually. It’s about the same size as Greater London.

Animal feed accounts for about 75% of soybean production, but the report reports that crop cultivation is losing more than 100,000 hectares of valuable habitat each year, including Brazil’s Cerrado. Warned that it is contributing to climate change, deforestation and habitat transformation in the system, giving way to soybean production.

In addition to reducing the risk of deforestation, the report concludes that insect farming has the advantage that many insects are biological waste disposal companies, helping to recycle and decompose materials.

They can be bred from a wide range of ingredients or substrates and can process excess food, by-products and other ingredients that would otherwise be wasted.

He added that about 240,000 tonnes of insect meal per year could be sourced from insect farms in the United Kingdom.

WWF and Tesco are now calling on the UK Government to take in the views of Food Standards Scotland and require the FSA to investigate potential and regulatory requirements for the use of additional substrates in insect breeding. I did. Used to raise insects.

Ashwin Prasad, Tesco’s Chief Product Officer, said:

“Retailers like Tesco and the entire food industry are playing an important role in expanding the use of insect feed, and we are already trying to use it in our aquaculture supply chains.

“Based on this report, we urge the government to develop financial incentives to support innovative farming methods such as insect farming that support the scale-up of these new industries. “

Mike Barrett, Executive Director of Science and Nature Maintenance at WWF, said:

“We encourage the UK Government and the retail industry to take urgent action to remove environmentally harmful practices from supply chains and shelves. This involves the use of alternative proteins such as insect meals. Includes expanding and supporting the demands of circulating feed systems here in the UK. “