Cricket burgers – shaking up the protein supply chain

CORDIScovery – unearthing the hottest topics in EU science, research and innovation

Melted cheese over a burger – is your stomach rumbling? How about making that cheese from plant protein and the burger from insects?

We need to develop ways to produce more existing sources of protein more efficiently. Animal-based protein has an important role as part of a sustainable diet and as a contributor to food security. But now is the timefor alternative sources of complementary protein for direct human consumption, and animal feed, to increase their market share.

In this episode we are going to be looking at how to increase the production and market uptake of complementary proteins, with:

Emanuele Zannini who has a PhD in Applied Biomolecular Science and is now a senior researcher coordinator at the School of Food and Nutritional Sciences, University College Cork.

Tuen Veldkamp, a senior researcher in Animal Nutrition at Wageningen University and Research (WUR) and who is interested in testing and demonstrating innovative rearing methods to help the European insect supply chain become commercially viable.

Erlend Sild the founder of the deep-tech company, BugBox, who has developed an industrial and scalable technology forsustainable protein production from crickets, providing competitive production costs and increasing efficiency using AI.