“The issue with waxworms is that they don’t have as high a protein content as something like a mealworm or Black soldier fly larvae,” said Llewellyn.

Llewellyn told FeedNavigator that the company had been working on insect meals with various clients and had decided to conduct its own research looking at waxworms as a research project. The findings should be of interest to fish farms working to find low-cost, sustainable sources of protein to cater to the growing global demand for fish. SalmoSim’s findings suggested that protein sources for farmed fish could be derived from the insects which have been used to digest plastic waste, thus contributing to the wider circular economy. “The difficulty is consumer perceptions of plastic in the food chain,” he confirmed. Llewellyn admitted that there would be a challenge to overcome the 'yuk factor' with consumers but said that there were other fish feed ingredients that would have the same reaction if known about. This issue was raised after SalmoSim, which provides in-vitro services in the market of aquafeed nutrition, unveiled the results of work using an in-vitro salmon gut simulator that found that waxworms fed on plastic waste offered the same nutritional value to farmed salmon as other commercially available insect meals.

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