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BY BERNHARD WARNER
contributing writer
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Replacing this feed with one made from insects would be cheaper
and more sustainable. "Even if we were to get 100,000 tons of
additional fish food supply from insects" (or less than 1 percent of
global demand), says Jones, "that would be a fantastic thing."
In the winter of 2006, four years after leaving the Navy, Courtright
was on the North Slope of Alaska consulting for an oil company
client. As he watched the towering gas flares light up the night sky, it
hit him. "I thought, Shit, this place is going to melt if we continue
burning fossil fuels at this rate," he recalls. "I have to do something
about it."
His first idea: Launch a biodiesel business. He would make fuel out of
oil from local restaurants and food-processing plants. But after
researching the idea, raising capital, and building a production
facility, Courtright pulled the plug in 2008, when availability of the oil
proved unreliable.
But Courtright kept turning the idea over in his mind. What else on
the planet makes fats and oils for biodiesel? "I looked at enzymes,"
he recalls. "Nah, too hard. I'm not a bacteriologist. I looked at algae.
That was probably a 20-minute no-go decision. Then it hit me: bugs.
They're easy to grow. At least, I thought they were." But after toying
with the notion of using bugs for fuel, Courtright got a better idea: Use
the protein and fat in bugs to feed the planet, not power it.
The obvious bug of choice was black soldier flies. These insects live
in many temperate climates around the world. As larvae, they are
extremely efficient at reducing organic materials like food scraps into
protein, oil, and fertilizer. And, unlike some breeds of flies, adult black
soldier flies don't bite or spread disease. There was just one, big
problem: breeding them on a large scale.
Black soldier flies like to mate on hot, sultry days. Getting them to
breed in captivity is difficult, particularly in colder seasons. But
Courtright was determined to figure it out. He turned a former seed
storage facility in Yellow Springs, Ohio, into a research lab. There, he
painstakingly tested the latest academic theories on black soldier fly
rearing. "I realized early on that all the documented research in this
area was incomplete," says Courtright. "The universities that were at
the forefront of black soldier fly rearing--their research never scaled.
You need process engineering, systems analysis, to get this to
scale."
Courtright was alone with the flies on a cold, overcast winter day
when it finally happened. As he had done countless times, he
adjusted the instruments and watched. Suddenly, the flies started to
pair up and fall to the floor. "When they mate, they move in tail to
tail," he explains. "You know it's working if you see them drop. Boop,
boop. It looks like little black rain drops."
It was a small setback. Within two weeks, Courtright had rebuilt the
mating chambers and was rearing flies again. It was a hard lesson,
but it proved he could replicate the crucial mating process. By the
end of 2010, he began staffing up, pitching customers, and taking on
investors. (So far, the company has raised about $5 million.)
In May, EnviroFlight was awarded a patent for that "love shack." The
design, which has since been modified, had included a multichamber
stainless steel unit--with an air pipe running through each chamber.
The fly pupae reside on the bottom level. When they become adults,
they fly up the air pipe to a caged mating chamber with thousands of
frisky adult flies.
After mating, the eggs are harvested in a basin below and taken to
"the nursery," large bins where larvae bulk up on a special diet of
vitamins, minerals, and plant-based feed. After that, the larvae chow
round-the-clock for up to two weeks on food byproducts from local
processing plants or spent grains from the Yellow Springs Brewery
across the street. (Court-right reserves about 10 percent of the larvae
to replenish his stock of adult breeders. Each summer, he adds
additional black soldier flies, caught in the wild, to prevent genetic
drift and to keep the colony healthy.)
The costs to run the operation are relatively low. Courtright typically
gets food scraps for little or no cost--and in some cases is even paid
to take leftover trimmings from food-processing plants. Although
EnviroFlight is still awaiting approval from federal regulators to sell
black soldier fly-based feed for the animals we eat, the company has
been operating at a profit since the fall of 2013, selling insect-based
meal to zoos and pet-food makers. (A Florida company, Tasty
Worms Nutrition, sells dried, whole fly larvae from EnviroFlight to
owners of backyard chickens and exotic lizards, under the brand
name Tasty Grubs, at $50 for a five-pound bag.) EnviroFlight also
packages and sells the larvae waste as an all-natural fertilizer.
As for the livestock feed, Courtright hopes to get the green light from
the Food and Drug Administration by the end of next year. (FDA
spokeswoman Jennifer Corbett Dooren refused to comment on
pending petitions, citing agency policy.) In the meantime, with
approval from the Ohio Department of Agriculture, EnviroFlight has
been running tests with select fish farmers. Results have been
positive. In one research trial run jointly by Ohio State and Kentucky
State universities in 2012, freshwater prawns were raised on a diet of
either EnviroFlight's fly-based meal or a traditional feed made for
catfish. The prawns grew to be nearly identical in size and taste, says
head researcher and aquaculture specialist Laura Tiu. One difference
was that the prawns fed on fly larvae were "lighter in color, more like
saltwater prawns," she says, not necessarily a bad thing. The other
big difference? EnviroFlight's feed was 16 percent cheaper.
The company is also conducting its own research and trials to get
black soldier fly larvae meal registered in the Association of American
Feed Control Officials rule book for approved animal feeds, the bible
of the industry. Once Courtright has AAFCO approval, which he
expects to get next year, EnviroFlight should be able to start selling
fly-based meal to farmers of trout, yellow tail, and salmon, and
consumers will begin to see fly-fed fish on restaurant menus.
EnviroFlight will also be able to sell its insect meal as an additive for
pig and chicken feeds.
Now, Courtright says, he's ready for anything. "Our systems are
tested and ready to go through any weather extreme, even another
polar vortex. I am confident this will work anywhere in the world now,"
he says, sounding like a battle-tested commanding officer. "My
competitors are doing this in temperate zones, like South Africa. I'm
doing this in Ohio. The weather in Ohio stinks, OK? Don't print that."