From Fish Waste to Omega-3 Larvae: How BSFL Upcycle Fish Byproducts

Anupa Velusamy

1 day ago

3 min read

Black soldier fly larvae fed on fish-processing waste can carry up to seven times more omega-3 than larvae on standard feed. That result, from a Canadian trial published on September 16, 2026, turns a smelly, fast-spoiling waste into a premium feed ingredient (Feedstuffs).

The Raw Material: Fish Processing Byproducts

When fish are filleted, dried or canned, a large share of each fish is left over. This includes heads, frames (the backbone and attached flesh), guts, skin and trimmings.

These byproducts are rich in protein and fish oil, but they are hard to handle.

The usual outlets are fishmeal plants, silage or disposal. Small and remote processors often lack access to a fishmeal plant. Black soldier fly larvae offer another route, because they can eat wet, oily waste directly and turn it into dry, storable protein and fat.

How the Process Works

Fresh fish-processing leftovers from the plant form the feed base.
Byproducts make up 50% of the larval feed. The other half of the recipe was not disclosed.
Young larvae are raised through their first, most delicate days.
Grow-out stage harvest takes just 11 days.
From 0.3 tonnes of feed, the team harvested about 90 kg of larvae.

As NRGene Canada's Yossi Levi put it, "We set out to demonstrate that a difficult waste stream could be converted efficiently and consistently at a commercially meaningful scale."

The Results and takeaway for us:

Fish-fed larvae carried 5.16–7.94% total omega-3, against 1.12% in larvae on standard feed. That is roughly five to seven times more. They also contained EPA and DHA, the two long-chain omega-3s that standard larvae lacked entirely (Feedstuffs).

Total omega-3: 1.12% on standard feed vs 5.16–7.94% on fish-byproduct feed
EPA: not detected on standard feed vs 1.14–1.89% on fish-byproduct feed
DHA: not detected on standard feed vs 0.37–0.65% on fish-byproduct feed
Omega-6 : omega-3 ratio: 12.8 : 1 on standard feed vs 1.2 : 1 on fish-byproduct feed
Feed conversion ratio (wet): 3.3, on an 11-day cycle

The omega-6 to omega-3 ratio matters as much as the omega-3 total. Standard larvae carry almost 13 parts omega-6 for every part omega-3. The fish-fed larvae were close to one-to-one, a far more balanced fat profile for the animals that eat them.

NRGene Canada's Dr. Ben Gradus summed up the significance: "These results matter because conventional BSF larvae generally contain very limited levels of EPA and DHA" (Provisioner).

Why Larvae Absorb Omega-3 From Their Food

Larvae store a copy of the fat they eat. That is the whole secret, and it works in three parts. Larvae are fat-storing machines. A black soldier fly larva spends its short life eating and packing away energy in a tissue called the fat body. It needs that reserve to survive the non-feeding pupa stage and to become an adult fly.They make some fats, but not EPA or DHA. From sugars and starches, larvae build their own fats, mostly saturated ones like lauric acid. They cannot make meaningful amounts of the long-chain omega-3s EPA and DHA. That is why the standard-fed larvae in the trial had none.

What they eat, they keep. When the diet contains fish oil, larvae take in its EPA and DHA and lay them down in their fat body largely as they are. So the larvae's fat starts to look like the fish oil they ate. Change the feed, and you change the product.

This is why BSFL are sometimes called a "tunable" ingredient. The same fly, on a different substrate, can produce a very different 'FAT' profile.

What It Means for Feed Buyers and Coastal India

Omega-3-rich larvae could compete with fish oil, not just with soymeal. That moves BSFL from a cheap protein into a higher-value functional ingredient.

For poultry: Larvae based feed shall be targetted to poultry feed, where omega-3 in the diet can carry through into eggs and meat.

For aquaculture: Farmed fish need EPA and DHA, which today come mostly from fishmeal and fish oil. Rabobank has warned of fishmeal shortages as early as 2028 without scaled alternatives (SeafoodSource).

For pet food: Pet food is the fastest-growing use of BSF, in a sector projected to reach $5.6 billion by 2035 (Petfood Industry). Omega-3 is a selling point for skin and coat health.

For India. India has a long coastline, busy fishing harbours and a large seafood-processing industry, all producing byproducts every day. Tamil Nadu alone has fish landing centres and dry-fish units along its entire coast. A BSFL unit placed next to a processor could turn that waste into a higher-value feed ingredient close to where it is produced.