Requirements on Consumer Information about Product ... - ANEC

Consumer Information about PCF
processing etc.). It is especially difficult to cover the variety of farms (e.g. small, large,
different equipment) and the huge amount of different food products.
Even though some available studies that compare conventional with organic food (e.g. FiBL
2009, IÖW 2008) come to the conclusion that the PCF of organic food is lower than of
conventional agriculture, this result cannot be expected right away for all product groups.
In general, it must be stated that a product differentiation is quite difficult:
• For fruits and vegetables, the PCF is quite similar if the cultivation, production,
transport etc. are consistent.
• For other product groups, such as dairy products or meat, is it impossible to categorise
the PCFs because there are a lot of different data connected to, e.g. the different
number of production phases.
• For converted products, such as frozen vegetables or dried potatoes, it is advisable to
categorise them with regard to their level of converting, e.g. frozen, tinned, peeled, or
cooked products.
Also, the variability of PCF results is high. Main factors are:
• Season. Example: the difference between the production of tomatoes seasonal (= field
grown: 0,0857kg CO2e/kg) and tomatoes outside the season (= grown in the
greenhouse: 1,5672kg CO2e/kg) (Taylor 2000).
• Farm size, farm equipment. (See above.)
• Location. The transport distance and the means of transportation influence the total
PCF of a product (share of contribution between below 1% and 57% (apples from New
Zealand; ifeu 2009).
• Cultivation. In (at least some) conventional agriculture, more GHG emissions occur
(primarily because of the use of mineral fertilizer, that emits a lot of GHG during
production and use), whereas in organic agriculture, more land is used, which also
leads to more CO2e emissions (IÖW 2008).
A PCF is cost-intensive but very helpful for exemplary products / production chains as it
allows drawing general conclusions and guidelines in the sense of “regional and seasonal is
better” / “ready made or home made is better” / “beef or pork is better”, etc. It will not be
useful and feasible to do specific PCF studies (on the bases of primary data) on all kinds of
different food products.
As outlined before, PCF serves very well as a basis for general conclusions which then can
be part of general food guidelines like the ones from the Swedish “National Food
53