insect feed - Green Prophet

Startup FreezeM turns food waste into insect protein for fish and chicken

Karin Kloosterman — Sun, 28 Sep 2025 07:51:33 +0000

FreezeM Decodes Insect Farming

You are what you eat eats, is the famous quote by Michael Pollan, food author and activist. While many of us are probably put off by the idea of eating insect meal as protein, a new startup has gone down the food-chain to make a sustainable source of protein feed for the creatures we still do like to eat, namely fish and birds such as chicken. These omnivores do require a high-protein feed, and the end-quality of what you eat will only be as good as what the animal you eat, eats.

A new startup has developed a process to cultivate and ship black soldier flies so they can shipped and activated for growth to where they are needed.

To reiterate, FreezeM is not producing insects for people to eat directly (like crunchy cricket snacks) you might see at alt.protein events, but their focus is on using insects as a protein source for animal feed (and indirectly, food security).

They developed a technology to “pause” the life cycle of black soldier fly (BSF) larvae which ensures that costly grow labs aren’t needed where the feed is needed, but instead allows them to ship dormant larvae worldwide, which can then be “woken up” on-site and fed with local organic waste. Let’s hope the focus stays on organic.

FreezeM insect incubator founders

The larvae, onnce unpacked, quickly grow and can be processed into high-protein feed for fish (aquaculture), poultry, and livestock, as well as insect oil and fertilizer byproducts. The byproducts part sounds not clear, but according to the company they address problems at once: A, an organic waste management – converting food waste and agricultural byproducts into something useful. We can get behind this. And, B, a stainable protein supply – reducing reliance on soy imports or overfished ocean resources for feed.

So FreezeM’s insects are the intermediate step: turning waste into animal feed (and eventually into meat, fish, or eggs for people). When I had my startup in agriculture, developing brains and controllers for greenhouses, this was a common need expressed by farmers: systems not only to feed people fresh food, but hydroponic systems that can create fresh feed for animals. Soy and corn products can play a role, but not be the only diet livestock should be eating.

According to Family Friendly Farms, it is not healthy for livestock to eat only corn and soy, and “meat from animals fed predominantly on corn and soy may lack essential nutrients, leading to potential nutrient deficiencies in humans who consume such meat.

FreezeM was founded in 2018 as a spin-off from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel by three researchers: Yuval Gilad (CEO), Idan Alyagor (CTO), and Yoav Politi (VP R&D). The founders were graduates of Weizmann and had expertise in molecular genetics / developmental biology (especially using fly embryos) and entomology.

The core technology (PauseM®) is based on inducing a “paused” or “suspended animation” state in Black Soldier Fly (BSF) neonates so that they can survive transportation with extended shelf life before being revived, fed and grown for animal feed. They also have a partnership with Hermetia Baruth GmbH (Germany) for joint production / distribution of PauseM in Europe.

In February 2024, FreezeM closed a Series A round of USD 14.2 million with that round was led by industrial investors and the European Innovation Council (EIC) Fund (along with existing investors / partners) to expand breeding hubs and commercialize PauseM. Prior to that FreezeM had raised €6.3 million in EIC funding. Their flagship product is PauseM®: essentially “paused” BSF neonates with a ~14-day guaranteed shelf life and survival of greater than 90%, with the economical idea of decoupling the breeding part of insect protein production from the rearing / growing part.

Farms that just want to feed larvae / grow / process don’t need to maintain their own breeding colony; they can order PauseM from FreezeM, feed the colony and feed it straight to the livestock.

This is a more palatable solution that other alt protein companies we’ve written about.

Curious to sink your teeth into alt. protein made from bugs? Jump in below.

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Insect farms to meet feed demand for animals, and us?

Faisal O'Keefe — Fri, 13 Feb 2015 16:35:56 +0000

World population is projected to reach 9 billion by 2050. Rising incomes in emerging economies lead to greater demand for meat-rich diets. As the world grows hungrier for animal protein, insects could be the new way to feed livestock, and us. Using insects to feed the animals providing tomorrow’s meat – does anything about this bug you?

It’s already happening, and it works like this. Start-ups in the nascent “nutrient-recycling” industry collect abattoir waste and process it into foodstock for flies. The flies breed inside special cages where newly hatched larvae are easily collected, then dried and compressed into flakes or powder used as a feed ingredient for larger meat-producing livestock.

Could this be a powerful contributor to a more sustainable food industry?

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, World Wide Fund for Nature, and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa all think it’s the most promising way forward to feed the planet. Just as a vegetarian meal uses less natural resources than a meat-based meal, feeding animals bug-based chow uses fewer resources than farming fish or vegetables for the same purpose.

Today nearly 30% of all wild-caught fish goes to feeding farmed fish, poultry, or pigs. About 95% of world soybean production – which depends on arable land and water – goes into animal feed. PROteINSECT, an EU-funded project investigating how flies can help meet future demands for protein, conducted breeding trials and found that one hectare of land could produce at least 150 tons of insect protein per year. By comparison, soy planted over the same area yields just under a ton of protein per year. Feeding trials also suggest that a bug-based diet will produce bigger, stronger livestock.

Insect-based feed prices fall between the soy meal and more expensive fish meal. And fly “ranching” has the smallest environmental footprint of the three.

Garbage in, protein out.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization released a report (link here) promoting insects as a basic ingredient in animal feed and human diet. It asserts that insects are ideal as they can be sustainably reared on vegetable and domestic waste as well as slaughterhouse byproducts.

Look at AgriProtein. Co-founded in 2010 by brothers Jason and David Drew, the South African company is shaking up the supply chain, devising new ways to recycle meat industry waste (blood, guts, manure) into insect feed for animals who now consume meal made of fish and soybeans.

Jason Drew told the Guardian, “A third of all the fish we take out of our seas is ground up into fishmeal. The catches are unsustainable and the falling supply and increasing demand are leading to prices hitting new highs.” He added that the bug-based alternative, “means tonnes of fish we don’t need to take from the sea, and less waste to landfill.” Their first large-scale factory will be working this year, farming about 8.5 billion flies who will produce seven tonnes of their maggot-based feed, MagMeal, daily.

Vancouver’s Enterra Feed makes insect-based feed and fertilizer. Next month they will open a largely automated production facility where larvae are grown in sensor-rigged trays that track the time and content of automatic feedings, and ambient temperatures within the trays. That data allows technicians to decide best harvest times when insect protein and fat content is at its peak. The facility will accept 100 tons of pre-consumer food waste daily to feed its population of black soldier flies.

A Parisian start-up, Ynsect, claims to be building the world’s first fully automated large-scale insect production facility, capable of producing 10,000 tons of dried protein meal, liquid fat, and chitin-derived products from insects each year. Construction will begin next year.

Health experts press for more data.

Regulatory processes about insects differ widely across countries. Following a national outbreak of mad cow disease, the EU introduced legislation in 2001 that treats insects like livestock once they have been dried and converted into a flake or powder form: in this case, banning them – along with other processed animal proteins – from feed for animals reared for human consumption. There is also a law against farmed animals being raised on waste such as manure.

AgriProtein’s maggot feed has been approved in South Africa for fish and chickens, but not mammals. Dutch regulations restrict Amsterdam-based Protix Biosystems to producing its insect-based feeds for research purposes only. “The concept of the insect as a protein source is something nature already evolved to perfection,” says cofounder Kees Aarts. “We just need scalable technologies.”

Novelty insect-based foods like “Chirps” (tortilla chips made from ground crickets) and Chapul baked goods (made from cricket flour) are emerging online and on shop shelves, but the idea of eating insects is still a stretch for most.

Aarts suggests that the looming crises in food and water will prompt rapid changes in global legislation. “As a feed ingredient it’s common sense … nature’s principles apply,” he says.

Image of fly larvae from Shutterstock

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