Effect of insect meal as an alternative protein source on the metabolism of growing pigs

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Protein-rich insect meals might be alternative and sustainable protein sources in animal nutrition in the near future, provided that legal obstacles will be overcome, animals´ performance is not impaired in comparison to the use of classical protein sources and any safety issues can be excluded. While several studies demonstrated that insect meal can be used in feeding rations for broilers without impairing animal´s performance, available studies in pigs are insufficient. In addition, potential effects of insect meal on metabolism and health of farm animals are completely unknown. Own preliminary work with genetically obese rats shows that insect meal has beneficial effects on lipid metabolism. Moreover, observations from these own studies demonstrate strong effects of insect meal on other metabolic pathways, such as involved in metabolism of amino acids and xenobiotics and cellular stress response, overall indicating a comprehensive and complex influence on animal´s metabolism by insect meal. Although these results cannot be directly transferred to the situation in farm animals, it is likely that insect meal also influences the metabolism of farm animals considering the abundance of changes observed in obese rats. Against this background the project aims to elucidate the effects of insect meal as an alternative protein source on the metabolism of growing pigs. The main hypothesis of this project is that replacement of soybean extraction meal by insect meal influences the metabolism of growing pigs. To test this hypothesis, a 5 week feeding trial with weaned piglets will be carried out in which soybean extraction meal is replaced either completely (100%) or partially (50%) with insect meal in isoproteinogenic feeding rations. Since the type of influence of insect meal on metabolism cannot be predicted and both, potentially beneficial and detrimental effects of insect meal on metabolism shall be identified, omics-techniques such as transcriptomics, metabolomics and lipidomics will be applied. In addition, microbiome analysis based on high-throughput sequencing of 16S rRNA gene amplicons of microbial community obtained from caecal chyme and analysis of microbial metabolites in caecal chyme will be performed. Besides important findings regarding the potential of insect meal as a protein source in pig nutrition, the project is also expected to provide important findings with regard to the use and safety aspects of insect meal in human nutrition, because the pig is known to be suitable model for the human.