Assessing the sustainability of insect-derived ingredients requires looking beyond a single environmental footprint. 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. 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.
This raises a more relevant question: are we measuring the full impact of an ingredient, or only the impacts that are easiest to quantify? 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.
Marine Bézagu, PhD | Head of Product Development Aquaculture at Innovafeed
Maye Walraven | Chief Business Officer at Innovafeed
Stijn Harms | Chief Technology Officer at Protix
Abstract
The sustainability of insect-derived ingredients has been the subject of conflicting studies and opinions. Many of the existing assessments rely on early-stage pilot data and on static comparisons with mature and optimized conventional ingredients. Based on the experience of leading industrial producers, this commentary offers a complementary, at-scale perspective on the sector’s sustainability trajectory. Economies of scale, combined with optimized 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. Meanwhile, many conventional benchmarks have higher emissions, depending on source, production system, and
methodology.
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.
I. SCALE BIAS IN EXISTING INSECT LCAs
A 2026 systematic review of insect farming life cycle assessments (LCAs) identified pervasive methodological heterogeneity, with production scale emerging as a critical variable (Ribeiro et al., 2026). At small scale (laboratory and pilot scale), energy consumption, ambient conditions management, feedstock and waste logistics are not optimized; combined with very low production volumes, fixed costs inflate the figures when consumption and emissions are computed per kilogram of insect biomass.
These are operational features of early-stage technology, not intrinsic characteristics of the insect industry. When LCAs report carbon emission figures from such conditions, the resulting picture reflects early-stage operating constraints rather than the sector’s performance as a whole. The dispersion is striking: published black soldier fly assessments report global warming values ranging from roughly 0.5 to as much as 77 kg CO eq per kilogram of protein, depending on feedstock, processing energy and allocation method (Ribeiro et al., 2026).
The sector has moved decisively beyond the pilot stage. A 2019 LCA of Protix’s commercial operations showed that large-scale, underutilised co-products stream-fed black soldier fly (Hermetia illucens) production can already achieve emissions competitive with conventional protein sources (Smetana et al., 2019), and a 2025 follow-up confirms the trend, documenting a further marked decline in emissions as output has scaled (Francis, A., Schmitt, E., & Smetana, S., 2025).
Innovafeed’s trajectory also makes this dynamic concrete: the carbon intensity of its protein was divided by 5 since 2022 with industrial scale-up, to 1.2 kgCO per kg of protein in 2025, and is targeted at about 0.6 kgCO eq per kg of protein by 2030 as further process and scale optimizations are achieved (Innovafeed, 2025).
Part of this trajectory is notably enabled by synergetic industrial integration, which is not considered by lab scale projections. Innovafeed for example co-locates their facilities with industrial partners to recover waste heat that would otherwise be lost and feed larvae directly on wet organic by-products from an adjacent starch plant (streams that would otherwise be dried). This industrial symbiosis reshapes the energy and feedstock usage of insect rearing in a way no pilot study can capture, cutting the carbon footprint of the resulting meal by 80% relative to a non-symbiotic industrial producer (PhI et al., 2020). These are not self-reported claims taken at face value. Innovafeed’s carbon footprint is calculated and published as branded, thirdparty- reviewed data within the Global Feed LCA
Institute (GFLI) database, publicly listed among GFLI’s branded data participants. Protix’s figures rest on a peer-reviewed Life Cycle Assessment published in the Journal of Cleaner Production (Francis, A., Schmitt, E., & Smetana, S. (2025)). At the scale both companies now operate, externally validated measurement, not internal accounting, is what distinguishes a credible sustainability trajectory from a promotional one.
II. BENCHMARKING INSECT INGREDIENTS WITH CONVENTIONAL ALTERNATIVES
Insect ingredients are often benchmarked against soybean meal and marine-resource meal at their mature, fully optimized state, while insects are still near the start of their scaling curve (a 10-year-old large-scale production). Yet, the incumbent benchmarks are highly variable depending on the sources and mostly higher than insect-derived ingredients. As a comparison, on GFLI v2.1 data (EF 3.1, economic allocation), the carbon footprint of marine and plant proteins varies widely with species, origin and processing, and for most entries exceeds that of industrial-scale insect meal (e.g. fish meal 0.6 to 15.5, soy protein concentrate or “SPC” 4.5 to 7.3 kg CO /kg) (Global Feed LCA Institute (GFLI), 2023). Some players may benefit from access to lower emission protein sources (SPC about 1kg CO /kg) thanks to responsible sourcing and farming but at global scale, less than 3% of soy is produced in compliance with a recognized sustainability standard, so this low-emission sourcing covers only a marginal share of total volumes (Voora et al., 2024).
Furthermore, the carbon LCA’s above figures follow an attributional logic, which captures direct production flows but omits avoided or degraded ecosystem services and so understates the true picture. A consequential perspective can provide additional insight into the effects of increasing production volumes, because it exposes how each additional ton of conventional protein draws on increasingly constrained land and marine resources (Zamagni et al., 2012).
On land-based protein sources, once land-usechange emissions are counted, soybean impacts climb, since expansion is constrained by land availability and deforestation-linked commitments. This pressure is all the greater given that 77% of agricultural land is already used to feed livestock for meat and dairy production (OECD/FAO, 2025). For marine ingredients, supply is structurally capped by wild fish stocks and highly exposed to climate variability (Novel Sharma, 2025), so rising demand increasingly strains sustainable management: the share of marine stocks fished within biologically sustainable levels fell to 62% in 2021, continuing a decades-long decline (FAO, 2024).
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.
Fishing also carries uncounted carbon costs that compound this impact. Indeed, by removing forage and large-bodied fish, commercial fishing disrupts the ocean’s biological carbon pump, as fish mediate up to ~15% of organic carbon export, and the sequestration foregone per ton of fishmeal has been estimated at roughly 10 kg CO eq/kg, several times the figure reported in standard LCAs (Cavan & Hill, 2022; Mariani et al., 2020; Opiyo et al., 2026).
III. TOWARDS A COMPREHENSIVE VIEW OF ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT
Sustainable intensification of conventional ingredients such as soy is real and needed, but it cannot close the gap alone: global protein demand is rising (OECD/FAO, 2025), and the food system already accounts for roughly a third of anthropogenic greenhouse-gas emissions (Costa et al., 2022). Meeting that demand requires complementary sources that add capacity without worsening the global impact, and insect ingredients can be one complementary option. Even optimistic shifts, raising carbon sequestration by 30–50% or moving 15% of protein demand to plant sources, would not close the gap on their own; new, reduced-impact technologies are needed to meet demand sustainably. Insect ingredients have the potential to contribute to a more sustainable animal nutrition system and meet demand (Costa et al., 2022).
The deeper value of insect ingredients lies in how they improve the performance of foodproduction systems themselves. As natural components of the diets of fish, poultry and other monogastric species, insect-derived ingredients carry functional value that ingredient-level LCAs ignore.
Their bioactive compounds (antimicrobial peptides, lauric acid, chitin and nucleotides) support gut health and immunity (Richardson et al., 2021). In practice these can improve KPIs such as survival and feed efficiency in aquaculture, so fewer inputs are wasted per kilogram of animal produced (Mohan et al., 2022).
Industrial-scale insect production already alsrehaodwys that environmental performance can improve substantially as processes mature and scale. What excites me most is the potential for further gains through continued innovation, efficiency and better integration within the food and feed system.
Because these gains act at the level of the whole production system, an ingredient that lifts farming KPIs delivers benefits that multiply far beyond its own footprint.
Counting both the hidden costs of conventional alternatives and the environmental value driven by insect meal functional properties points to one conclusion: a comprehensive assessment makes the case for insect ingredients even stronger than simply benchmarking these ingredients’ carbon footprints. Meeting rising protein demand within planetary limits will require new, reduced- and positive-impact sources, and industrial-scale insect ingredients can form part of that solution: carboncompetitive at scale, still early on their efficiency curve, and able to valorize organic by-products that would otherwise be downgrade.
