Valorization of Organic Food Surpluses and Brewer's Spent Grains into Organic Insect Protein for Replacing Soybean in...

The conversion of agro-industrial co-products and unsold organic plant-based residues into black soldier fly (BSF; Hermetia illucens (L. 1758)) proteins was assessed for use in organic post-weaning piglet diets in Belgium. A total of 72 crossbred female piglets (Landrace × Pietrain) were enrolled in a 5-week feeding trial. Experimental diets consisted of a common energy core (81.2% of the feed) and a protein core (18.8%) composed of organic soybean meal, pea meal, and potato protein, partially replaced by defatted BSF meal at inclusion levels of 15%, 25%, and 35%. All diets were formulated to be isoenergetic and isonitrogenous, with standardized ileal digestibility values for lysine, methionine, threonine, and tryptophan held constant. Incorporating 15% defatted BSF meal can substitute conventional organic protein sources without compromising growth performance in post-weaning piglets. However, economic modelling based on a cumulative feed conversion ratio expressed on a dry matter (DM) basis showed that break-even prices for organic BSF meal remained well below the price of the control protein nucleus (€1039·t^-1, excluding VAT), indicating that economic parity could not be achieved at typical market prices under the observed feed efficiency.