French retail group Auchan, one of France’s largest fish traders, will be offering trout and salmon grown with insect meal in some of its markets early next year, reports Schweizerbauer.ch.
To this end, the group has signed a cooperation agreement with InnovaFeed, a leading French start-up company in the field of insect breeding for animal nutrition. With this agreement, the two companies want to contribute to the development of more sustainable aquaculture.
The insect meal production, mainly fly larvae, will take place at InnovaFeed’s production plant in Gouzeaucourt in northern France. The larvae will be fed with non-human by-products of beet and starch production, dried and ground into powders similar in protein content to fishmeal.
According to InnovaFeed’s co-founder Guillaume Gras, the process developed by InnovaFeed is a sustainable solution for the production of fish feed.
Strong signal to the industry
The move by Auchan sends a strong signal to the industry, Gras said. After the trial period with trout, the sale of fish produced with insect meal could be extended to all markets in this chain and the product range could be extended to other species such as salmon.
Auchan is a French retail group with more than 100 stores in China, France, Hungary, Italy, Luxembourg, Morocco, Ukraine, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Romania and Taiwan. The head office is located in Villeneuve-d’ Ascq.
