Aaron Dossey first combined his two passions—insects and chemistry—in his final year of graduate school in 2006, when the University of Florida, Gainesville, had just bought a new nuclear magnetic resonance probe. Dossey brought in several insect specimens he had been keeping at home, and extracted chemical compounds to test the new device. Although his academic research career had focused on biochemistry, in his spare time he had become a self-taught entomologist. “I think insects are fascinating: they’re neat to look at and there are so many unique life history and biochemical stories,” Dossey says. After a biochemistry postdoc position, also at the University of Florida, he made the full switch to entomology in 2010 as a postdoc with the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). While studying citrus pests, Dossey became ever more enthralled with the world of insects. Heeding a call for grant applications from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, he turned his attention to making sustainable foods from insects. After winning the grant, Dossey set up his own business, All Things Bugs, and has so far used insect protein to create taco meat, protein bars, and a paste to treat malnutrition. To find out more about how insect-based food can contribute to global food security, read his story “Why Insects Should Be in Your Diet.”
......
Company Gets Grant To Develop Food Based On Insects To Fight Malnutrition
By
All Things Bugs said that it is a Grand Challenges Explorations winner, an initiative funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. All Things Bugs develops insect-derived technologies for applications in food, farm and pharma.
Dr. Aaron T. Dossey, Founder and Owner of All Things Bugs will pursue an innovative global health and development research project, titled “Good Bugs: Sustainable Food for Malnutrition in Children”.
Grand Challenges Explorations (GCE) funds individuals worldwide to explore ideas that can break the mold in how we solve persistent global health and development challenges. Dr. Dossey’s project is one of over 100 Grand Challenges Explorations Round 8 grants announced today by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
“Grand Challenges Explorations encourages individuals worldwide to expand the pipeline of ideas where creative, unorthodox thinking is most urgently needed,” said Chris Wilson, director of Global Health Discovery and Translational Sciences at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. “We’re excited to provide additional funding for select grantees so that they can continue to advance their idea towards global impact.”
To receive funding, Dr. Dossey and other Grand Challenges Explorations Round 8 winners demonstrated in a two-page online application a bold idea in one of five critical global heath and development topic areas that included agriculture development, immunization and nutrition.
Dr. Dossey’s project will develop a novel food product made from insects to treat malnutrition in children from famine stricken areas of the world. This is the first project of Dr. Dossey’s recently founded company All Things Bugs. Utilizing insects as human food toward a more sustainable and secure human food supply is an emerging field which is growing in popularity. For example, Dr. Dossey attended a meeting in January, 2012 at the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization in Rome Italy on this subject. Insects possess many attractive attributes such as a higher feed conversion ratio and utilize substantially less water than do other livestock animals such as beef cattle and swine. This also means that they can be farmed in areas of the world where cattle and other livestock cannot; providing even more promise of feeding the world.
....
Improving Cricket Farming to Feed More People
Innovations to raise edible insects more efficiently will drive down the cost of this promising food commodity that is growing in popularity in North America and Europe.
ATHENS, GEORGIA, JULY 7 2015 – New research begins today in the first U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) funded project to focus on insect farming for human food, concentrating on improving efficiency and lowering costs in farming crickets.
With around 25 U.S. and Canadian companies currently producing consumer products with cricket powder (finely ground crickets in a flour like form), a handful of industrial farms raise crickets for human consumption. The processes involved in farming these nutritious edible insects remain primarily manual, with labor costs in particular keeping the price of cricket powder at over $25 per pound.
The cricket farming research, led by Georgia-based company, All Things Bugs, will study how to increase automation in raising crickets. With a particular focus on harvesting, watering and feed formulations, end goals are to enhance cricket growth while lowering the cost of raising them, which in turn can decrease the price of cricket powder.
According to All Things Bugs‘ founder and lead researcher on the project, Dr. Aaron T. Dossey, “In order for this growing industry to fulfill its potential, innovations must help cricket farmers raise these ‘minilivestock’ more efficiently and thus drive down prices for the food industry. Ultimately crickets and other insects will be the lowest cost animal-based protein on the market.”
This US$100,000 grant is the third the company has received from the USDA Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program.
All Things Bugs’ previous funded projects have included $100,000 from the Gates Foundation to help alleviate child malnutrition via the use of insect ingredients, $100,000 from the USDA SBIR to further develop a “ready to use food” from insect ingredients and insect processing techniques. The company also received a $450,000 USDA SBIR grant to refine the patent pending technology Dr. Dossey invented to manufacture cricket powder and evaluate its functionality as a safe food
ingredient.
The Gates Foundation funded project inspired Dr. Dossey to start All Things Bugs, which in 2014 became the largest insect based food producer in the world. The company produced and sold approximately 10,000 pounds of cricket powder in its first year of operation and will produce approximately 25,000 pounds in 2015.
According to the United Nations, so-called “house crickets” (Acheta domesticus) are just one of over 2000 species of insects already eaten around the world. Requiring 10 times less feed than cattle while producing a similar amount of protein, as much calcium as milk and high levels of many vitamins and minerals, crickets are a sustainable, nutritious food source for an increasing human population.
Dr. Dossey will present results from his current insect based food research at the 2015 Institute of Food Technologists conference and Expo in Chicago on July 13, 2015. Learn more: http://bit.ly/1LSXwNx
About All Things Bugs, LLC
All Things Bugs, LLC is currently the world’s largest insect-based food company. All Things Bugs utilizes insects as “Low-Crawling Fruit,” by developing insect-based food and feed products, insect farming technologies and insect-derived biologically active chemical compounds for use in agriculture and medicine. Learn more at www.allthingsbugs.com
About USDA SBIR
The Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) offers competitively awarded grants to qualified small businesses to support high quality, advanced concepts research related to important scientific problems and opportunities in agriculture that could lead to significant public benefits. Learn more at http://nifa.usda.gov/program/small-business-innovation-research-program.
Learn more at www.allthingsbugs.com
Contact: Dr. Aaron T. Dossey, Founder, All Things Bugs LLC
info@allthingsbugs.com, 1-352-281-3643