Analysing the effects of feeding black soldier fly on broiler growth performance: a meta-analysis.

Context: The black soldier fly has been found to be a rich protein source, containing high amounts of protein and lipids, making them a valuable and sustainable alternative to conventional protein sources, such as fish and soybean meals, for broilers, which has also been demonstrated by multiple studies. Aims: A meta-analysis was conducted using peer-reviewed published research on the use of black soldier flies in poultry diets to test the hypothesis that it enhances growth performance as a sustainable alternative to plant-based protein sources. Methods: To this end, we used publicly available databases (Google Scholar, PubMed, Science Direct, Embase) to identify peer-reviewed papers. Retrieved articles were screened for relevance and quality using established criteria. The studies were largely rejected due to non-reporting of variance measures or reporting pooled measures of variance that could not be used. As a result, eight studies were used to extract data for growth performance, including body weight gain. Key results: The meta-analysis showed that the effect of feeding black soldier fly meals on body weight gain was non-significant. However, the subgroup analysis showed that utilisation of the frozen form of the black soldier fly lowers body weight gain compared with the birds fed basal diets. Furthermore, the feed intake was significantly (P < 0.05) reduced when the broilers were fed with diets containing black soldier fly meals. The feed conversion ratio showed non-significant (P > 0.05) differences with the supplementation. Conclusions: The inclusion level of black soldier fly larvae meal in any form was seen to be safe up to 10%, and the effective duration of the supplementation was ≤35 days. Implications: The utilisation of black soldier fly as a sustainable protein source should be encouraged to facilitate farmers in terms of being less dependent on soybean meal, as well as to reduce the competition between humans and animals for plant protein sources. Due to the growing global demand for more sustainably produced animal protein, there is an intensive search for alternative feeds to replace soybeans, which increases the cost of feed due to limited availability in some countries. Black soldier fly shows great potential for substituting soybeans in poultry diets as it is a sustainable and protein-rich alternative to conventional protein sources for broilers. A meta-analysis was conducted to test the hypothesis that it enhances growth performance and can reduce competition for plant protein sources among humans and animals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]