I'm baaaack.

Hey everyone. I'm back from vacation. Thank you to the Board and all of you for the time off. My family and I visited the 49th state, Alaska, which happened to be the 49th state I have personally visited. Only North Dakota to go. I have two action items, RSVP requests actually, for you today - the Annual Meeting and our second Lunch 'n' Learn - please don't miss them.

Now to the news.

An Updated Website You Say?!

I case you missed this section in July.... A big shoutout to Marianne Shelter of Enviroflight for doing the heavy lifting to refresh our website. It is live now and I encourage you to give it a look and review. 

Thanks to those who have helped us catch minor misses so far, if you see something that needs a tweak, please let us know - marianne.shetler@enviroflight.net. We'll do some thoughtful promotion starting this month.

Board of Directors

Our Board of Directors met the July 18 to review progress to date. They had a full agenda but I'd like to highlight one area please - our budget. As you may know, we have had several large companies go out of business in the past eight months and this has a big impact on association revenue. The board reviewed our current financial position and discussed how we finish the year well. There are two things each of you can do.

If you are aware of any company in our space that is not a member, please introduce us. If you know work with any foundations, funders, or family offices that are interested in supporting the industry, please introduce us as well. Thank you for your continued support.

FRASS

In case you forgot - Boom, bam, bang, pow, zap, wham, pop, yee freakin haw. The last of our members with an application before OMRI has been approved. Woo woo!

I'm going to keep leading with the above for a while! Please also see the note in the NACIA Foundation section about the buildout of the Frass Institute website that is ongoing. Also, we have brought renewed focus to our work related to chitin claims. Please stay tuned.

I am very excited about this - I have been exploring the creation of a frass research library that we populate and then can access using AI to analyze and answer questions. Recently I found a tool to do just that, NotebookLM. With the help of Ian Banks (yeah that guy again) we now have 74 publications in our library and the tool has created a mindmap, a podcast, and so much more. It is amazingly scary. However, I have no figured out how to widely share the tool. Until I do, I have two ideas for how everyone of you can access this tool - 1. send me your questions and I send you back the response, 2. schedule time with me and we'll play with it together via Zoom. As a preview, please find the AI generated podcast below. Again, awesome and a little scary, all I did was push a button.

 Insect_Frass__The_Tiny_Solution_to_Sustainable_Agriculture_and_Waste_Management.m4a

Trade

Groundhog day, at least related to trade changing often! I continue to follow as best I can the tariff changes. My primary concern is movement of goods between the US and Canada. Our industries products should be covered under the USMCA and not impacted by current tariffs, but if you are having a different experience please let me know.

Ingredient Definitions

This week state regulators and some of their counterparts from FDA are meeting in Omaha, NE for the summer meetings of AAFCO and AAPFCO. I have weighed in on our behalf as an advisor but am not in attendance this time. Fortunately, our colleague Ian Banks is there (thanks Ian and Enviroflight) and Amanda Ashworth of the USDA MINIStock team is also making a frass presentation (again thanks Ian). I'll have more to report in two weeks.

Annual Meeting

This year our colleagues from Buhler are hosting us at their Minneapolis facility for our Annual Meeting. The team there is helping organize a great set of meetings and your RSVP is greatly appreciated. 

Lunch 'n' Learns

Our next Lunch 'n' Learn is this Friday, August 8, co-hosted by Soldier Fly Technologies. You can sign-up here, and please help promote within your network. 

Member Minute

Oh yeah - another new member! - Please welcome John Bloch and the intersect Agriculture (iA) team. 

intersect Agriculture (iA) is a BSFL company started by a team with a food processing/environmental science background and interested in learning more about the US insect farming space. As a new member of NACIA we want to get plugged in and collaborate as we feed this emerging market.

_____

NACIA Foundation

Work has ramped up to relaunch the Frass Institute under the NACIA Foundation structure. A rough outline of the new website and pages has been drafted and a small team is moving this work forward. 

We have submitted a proposal to led a session at the The Sustainable Ag Summit coming up this fall. I'll report back if we are successful.

Alright, what they actually say to tell sled dogs to go - yes useless Alaska learning, that's all I have for today. Holler if you need something.

Aaron Hobbs

Executive Director

An Updated Website You Say?!

Yep, I do say. A big shoutout to Marianne Shelter of Enviroflight for doing the heavy lifting to refresh our website. It is live now and I encourage you to give it a look and review. With only two sets of eyes on it, we won't be surprised if some minor detail was missed. We've already found a thing or two we want to tweak, so if you see something please let us know - marianne.shetler@enviroflight.net. We'll do some thoughtful promotion beginning in August.

Board of Directors

Our Board of Directors will meet again this coming Friday to work on both NACIA and NACIA Foundation business. Trade, frass, a new frass institute within the NACIA Foundation and a few other topics make up the agenda this week. 

FRASS

In case you forgot - Boom, bam, bang, pow, zap, wham, pop, yee freakin haw. The last of our members with an application before OMRI has been approved. Woo woo!

What does this mean? It means that everyone of our members who were seeking an OMRI listing for their frass have it. Boom, bam, bang, pow!

Trade

"Trade issues seem to have settled" is how I started this report last newsletter. Silly me. We are unsettled again and things will likely change several times between now and mid-Aug. Of note, there is some ambiguity regarding the trade of goods between the US and Canada. So for those of you in Canada, please keep an eye on your exports to the US and let me know ASAP if you start having issues. I don't expect this to become an issue, but you never know.

Ingredient Definitions

AAFCO and AAPFCO (focus on fertilizers) is meeting the first week of August in Nebraska. I will participate virtually but no fear, Ian Banks will be there in person. The agenda is lite on issues of specific interest to us. I learned this morning that there may be some fireworks around AAFCO's opposition to the PURR Act which if passed would take some authority away from state agencies and provide consistency to us. 

Annual Meeting

Please mark your calendar to join our Annual Meeting November 3 - 5 near Minneapolis, MN. We will be hosted by Bühler at their facility. More details to come.

Lunch 'n' Learns

Our next Lunch 'n' Learn is on the books for August 8, co-hosted by Soldier Fly Technologies. I've just published the event today, you can sign-up here, and we'll be promoting in the coming days. 

Member Minute

It's been a minute, but I'm happy to pick this back up with an intro and shout-out to new member Matt Beck of Valorize Bioscience. At Valorize Bioscience, they're reinventing downstream processing of insects to create dramatically improved ingredients, unlocking a sustainable future for the human and pet industries. Please welcome Matt, give them a looky, and reach out to collaborate. 

 Other Business

The Academic Society for Insects as Food and Feed (ASIFF) has recently launched. This is an academic society focused specifically on our industry and they are soliciting industry members. You can learn more at https://asiff.org/.

NACIA Foundation

Work has ramped up to relaunch the Frass Institute under the NACIA Foundation structure. A rough outline of the new website and pages has been drafted and a small team is moving this work forward. We are also looking at participation in several events in the fall, The Sustainable Ag Summit and State of Regenerative Agriculture (attached). The Foundation Board of Trustees will discuss both this week. 

 SORA'25 Deck - NYC Climate Week.pdf

That's all for today. Please let me know if I've missed something, you've got questions, or just want to chat.

 Sincerely,

 Aaron Hobbs

Executive Director

Hello All,

I'm happy to share that we are restarting something some of you may remember from years past, Lunch 'n' Learns. Next Friday, June 13 we will host our first in a series of lunch 'n' learns that will be co-hosted with our Allied Industry Members. These will be 45 minute Zoom meetings where the co-host "has the floor" and is invited to update attendees on their specific offerings to the market along with sharing their perspectives. A new thing, for me at least, we are going to try allowing these to be open to the general public. Registration will still be required and I will still monitor and admit attendees, but we will allow non-member participation. Anyway, please click one of the two links above to register. Of course please let me know if you find an error in the process or have any questions.

Board of Directors

Our Board of Directors will meet Friday to work on both NACIA and NACIA Foundation business. They'll be reviewing the work products from our strategic communications efforts, looking at website updates, and discussing many of the topics you see below.

FRASS

Frustratingly, this continues to be a mixed bag - another member received OMRI certification while another continues to face resistance from OMRI. If you have questions or are experiencing challenges with OMRI or any regulator, please reach out to me.

Trade

For real, who knows! As of this typing the tariffs remain in place. I did hear this week that if the ruling invalidating the tariffs made by the U.S. Court of International Trade stands, the tariffs might have to be refunded even. Seriously, who knows. 

State Registration/Regulatory Guide

I am happy to share with all of you the current version of our State Registration/Regulatory Tracker. The link should take you to a version of the tracker for viewing. If you have questions, find discrepancies, or wish to make updates, please let me know and I can change your access level. 

A big shout out to Alexx Blazzard for getting this started and work by Ian, Cheryl Powers, Erik Neff, Brenden Campbell, Karine Bouchard, and others for moving it along.

Ingredient Definitions

One item the board will review on Friday is the latest regarding how dried insects for insectivores are viewed by AAFCO. I've been part of a workgroup attempting to bring clarity to this topic. Fortunately for us, the one regulator that was causing issues on this topic has moved on and I believe a simple solution will prevail. Please stay tuned.

Other Business

The Innovative Feed Enhancement and Economic Development (Innovative FEED) Act (S. 1906) has now been reintroduced in both the House and Senate. This bipartisan legislation, if passed, will create a proper regulatory review process at the Food and Drug Administration for new animal food solutions that would improve animal health and production, food safety and on-farm conservation. Passage of this legislation will help bring new innovations to the marketplace in a timely way and help the animal food industry remain competitive with other countries that have already updated their regulatory review systems. Attached you will find AFIA's issue paper.

Annual Meeting

Please mark your calendar to join our Annual Meeting November 3 - 5 near Minneapolis, MN. We will be hosted by Bühler at their facility. More details to come.

_____

NACIA Foundation

Work continues slowly but steadily on our Foundation. We continue to build out the website, gather and sort data, that will live on the website, and look for opportunities for engagement. You may have noticed that the traditional NACIA website is also "under construction". I am working to update all of our public materials at the same time. If you enjoy websites, or just want to lend a hand, I could really use the help. 

Ok, that's all for today. Please let me know how I can help you and stay in touch.

Sincerely,

Aaron Hobbs

Executive Director

Let's Connect

202-510-8657