Jiminy’s, a manufacturer of insect-based pet food and treats, will showcase their line of sustainable dog treats at Global Pet Expo 2018.
The treats are made with cricket protein and mark a move toward sustainable pet food ingredients. According to Jiminy’s, crickets are a sustainable superfood using less land, water and feed than traditional protein sources while delivering the same whole protein amino acids required for a healthy diet.
“While we generally knew that our dog treats are environmentally superior to traditional protein alternatives, we wanted to quantify just how much better we really are,” Jiminy’s founder and CEO Anne Carlson said in a press release. “To do that, we partnered with Carbon Credit Capital in New York to measure the greenhouse gas emissions associated with our products' ingredients and ingredient procurement.”
The company claims that their dog treats produce 740 percent less greenhouse gas emissions than beef protein sources and 230 percent less than chicken.
“We are pleased to report that Jiminy’s initial hypotheses were confirmed,” said Reed Shapiro, director at Carbon Credit Capital. “Not only does Jiminy's provide more nutrition per gram of treat, and consume substantially less water, but they also emit an average of 7.4 times less greenhouse gas than beef protein treats, and 2.3 times less greenhouse gas than chicken protein treats.”
Other companies promoting insect-based protein
The startup insect-based dog treat company EntoNative raised EUR1.1 million (US$1.3 million) in a seed financing round. EntoNative received EUR950,000 from Brandenburg, Germany promotional bank ILB and EUR150,00 from other private investors. The fresh capital will be invested in the expansion of production and marketing. EntoNative manufactures snacks for dogs based on insects under the brand TeneTRIO.
The TeneTRIO insect-based dog treats are sold online and the products are shipped to all of Germany. For the time being, the company's expansion and sales plans are focused on Germany and subsequently to Austria and Switzerland.
In the Netherlands, Bühler Insect Technology is building an industrial plant to process black solider flies for animal nutrition, including pet food, together with its partner Protix.
The plant will be situated in the Netherlands and will serve customers in the feed industry. With construction starting this year, the plant is expected to be operational in the first half of 2018. It will produce protein meal and lipids that are used in the animal nutrition sector to feed pigs, chicken, fish, and domestic animals.
