Innovafeed and Protix publish white paper calling for dynamic assessment of insect ingredients in aquafeed

Two European black soldier fly (Hermetia illucens) producers have jointly published a white paper arguing that the feed industry's standard methods for evaluating insect ingredients are inadequate and should be replaced with a more dynamic framework that accounts for scale, system-level consequences, and in-farm functional benefits.

The white paper was published on 28 September 2026 by France-based Innovafeed and Dutch company Protix. It was written by Innovafeed's head of aquaculture product development Marine Bézagu, chief business officer Maye Walraven, and Protix chief technology officer Stijn Harms.

The authors argue that life cycle assessment (LCA), while valuable, has limitations in the context of a changing food and feed system. According to the white paper, "Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) provides an essential foundation, but it does not always capture the full impact of ingredient choices within a changing food and feed system." The paper adds that "at scale, factors such as competition for raw materials, land-use implications, alternative uses of co-products and functional benefits in animal nutrition can materially influence the overall outcome."

A central criticism in the white paper is that many existing sustainability assessments of insect-derived ingredients rely on early-stage pilot data and compare insects against conventional protein sources at their mature, optimised state. The authors contend that "economies of scale, combined with optimised processes and synergetic industrial integration, have already brought the carbon footprint of some industrial-scale black soldier fly protein systems to levels competitive with several conventional protein sources, on a curve that continues to bend downward as output grows."

The paper proposes a broader evaluative approach. "By combining traditional LCA with a broader assessment of system-level consequences, scalability and in-farm functional benefits, this paper proposes a more dynamic framework for evaluating insect-derived ingredients and their potential contribution to the sustainable growth of animal nutrition," the authors write.

Innovafeed reported that the carbon intensity of its insect-derived protein has fallen by a factor of five since 2022, which it attributes to industrial scale-up and co-location synergies at its site in Nesle, northern France. The facility shares its location with starch manufacturer Tereos and the Kogeban biomass plant. The company says this arrangement allows it to source substrate for the insects from Tereos's co-products and to use waste energy from Kogeban. Innovafeed states it produced 1.2 kg CO₂ per kg of protein in 2025 and is targeting approximately 0.6 kg CO₂ equivalent per kg of protein by 2030.

On the variability of conventional ingredient benchmarks, the white paper gives examples of fishmeal CO₂ per kg ranging between 0.6 and 15.5, and soy protein concentrate between 4.5 and 7.3 kg CO₂ per kg, and notes that both are subject to finite supply constraints. Bézagu is quoted as saying: "Soy will run out of land, fishmeal will run out of fish: you can pay more for them, but you can't pay the planet to catch up. Insects add protein without drawing on either, and will get better with scale."

The white paper frames the proposed framework as "policy-relevant," arguing that "looking beyond Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) to uncounted consequential carbon costs and in-farm functional benefits, we argue that a dynamic, at-scale assessment offers a more complete, policy-relevant basis for evaluating insect ingredients as one of the solutions to support sustainable growth of animal nutrition."