In Montreal (Canada) there is a waste-free enterprise for the production of livestock feed from flour worm protein.

Why grow corn to feed insects if you can use leftover food that you don’t know what to do? Nothing is lost in the Tricyle farm premises, nothing is created, everything is turned into a circular economic loop.

It is very hot in a small room bordered by large windows of a building in the Central Market of Montreal, where daylight penetrates. Rows of white baskets are lined up on shelves, each with a date.

Hundreds of larvae of flour worms, small insects, which in adulthood turn into black beetles, swarm through them. They eat special food.

And this particular feed, mainly made from food residues intended for compost, is a feature of the production of tricycle insects.

Thus, a new round feeding loop is created: the compost is eaten by insects, which in turn will be used to feed people or animals, and then plants thanks to the manure they produce.

In January 2019, 5 Tricycle employees moved to the Centrale Agricole cooperative in Montreal and began experimenting with food to test insect appetite. To feed the worms, they used coffee grounds, barley grains, and fruit pulp.

Within 8-10 weeks, the larvae reach the age of the crop. The rest are sent to a baking sheet: first they are blanched in boiling water, then the larvae are boiled at a very high temperature (400 degrees) for frying, dried at a low temperature to dehydrate them or frozen.

And who will eat them? Tricycle will begin selling its product to people through a website in early 2020. But in the small industry of breeding insects, most of the volumes produced are intended for the manufacture of animal feed, said company director Alexis Fortin.

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