Insects as red meat replacers? Scientific assessment pegged as “pivotal step”

24 May 2022 --- A scientific assessment partially funded by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has examined the overall health impacts of replacing red meat with an edible insect species. The project entitled “Novel foods as red meat replacers – an insight using Risk Benefit Assessment methods (NovRBA)” - aimed to develop and test harmonized Risk Benefit Assessment (RBA) methods to estimate the overall health impact of replacing red meat with the novel food.

Based on an appraisal of insect products that are more likely to be consumed in Europe, project participants compared the consumption of a beef patty consisting of 100% minced beef meat with a patty in which an edible insect dough would fully replace beef meat.

The external scientific report was produced by the Department of Hygiene, Epidemiology and Medical Statistics, School of Medicine, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA), Greece, National Food Institute (DTU), Denmark; German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR), Germany and French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and the Environment (INRAE), France. 

Testing validity of insects
The RBA steps included the problem definition, the identification, prioritization and selection of components together with associated health outcomes. 

The assessment included the selection of dose‐response relationships based on their internal validity (hazard characterization) and an exposure assessment of nutrient intake and exposures to microbiological hazards and compounds of toxicological concern associated with the reference and alternative scenarios. 

According to the disability‐adjusted life years (DALYs) composite metric, all health outcomes were quantified. 

The project standardized the pivotal step of selecting model components by developing a tiered approach to prioritizing elements establishing the “long,” the “short,” and the “final” list. The final list comprised 13 nutrients, two heat‐resistant spore-forming bacteria and inorganic arsenic. 

 The RBA model was developed using @Risk add‐in software using Monte Carlo simulations considering variability and/or uncertainty. 

Edible insect sector expands 
Earlier this year, the EU insect sector predicted the expansion of products containing newly authorized crickets and yellow mealworms.

Meanwhile, a recent ESFA food safety assessment concluded that house crickets are “not nutritionally disadvantageous.”

 In other insect developments, ValuSect recently issued €460,000 (US$496,600) to bolster edible insect businesses in Europe.

Edited by Elizabeth Green