Specieswatch: black soldier fly the UK's newest farmed creature

Maggots fed on waste food and larvae used as food on fish farms, promising revolutionary changesThe black soldier fly Hermetia illucens already numbers millions in Britain, but if you meet one in the wild it will have escaped. It is of the newest and most productive creatures farmed in these islands. So far it is being kept in controlled conditions so that its larvae can be fed to a large variety of pets - reptiles and birds, but mostly fish. The most ambitious projects involve feeding the maggots on tons of waste food and then using the larvae as the main source of protein for fish farms. The attraction is that the larvae grow incredibly fast, gaining up to 5,000 times their own body weight in a couple of weeks. The larvae contain a large array of nutrients absorbed from the food that would otherwise be dumped. Continue reading...