LCA Food 2012 in Saint Malo, France! - Manifestations et colloques ...

PLENARY SESSION 2: METHODOLOGICAL CHALLENGES FOR ANIMAL PRODUCTION SYSTEMS8 th Int. Conference on LCA in the
Agri-Food Sector, 1-4 Oct 2012
Another parameter to be considered is the choice of the functional unit (FU). As stated in the Guidelines,
“specification of the functional unit and the reference flows is essential to build and model the product system”
(UNEP/SETAC 2009; 53). In the study, the SLCA referred to the same FU as the ELCA; however, the
FU served different purposes in each. In the ELCA, it allowed quantification of the main material assets required
to fulfil the primary function of the system, which allowed quantification of all the material and energy
flows of the system and, hence, the elementary flows. In the SLCA, it was instead used to list the main
inputs and services involved in the milk’s life cycle and to identify the businesses providing them. As a consequence,
the socioeconomic performance assessed was not necessarily quantitatively related to the FU, as in
the ELCA (section 4.3).
4.2. Inventory
In ELCA, the inventory phase includes data collection, validation, relating the inventory to the FU and
aggregation. These phases were not readily repeatable in the SLCA. First, as mentioned above, business behaviours
were not directly and quantitatively related to the FU. Moreover, aggregation could not take place
before the assessment, since the social norms against which business behaviours were benchmarked were
site-specific and varied across regions and supplying sectors. Therefore, the SLCA inventory phase included
only data collection and validation.
In both cases, site-specific data were used to document processes and behaviours occurring on dairy
farms and generic ones for those occurring upstream in the life cycle. But the type of the data collected differed
significantly, as did the nature of the sources consulted. In ELCA, specific data are used to get a better
idea of the processes occurring at each life cycle stage, and generic databases exist to document those processes.
In SLCA, both the behaviours of organisations and the benchmarks against which they are assessed
need to be documented. As there are few existing databases covering socioeconomic issues at a business or
sectorial level, some site-specific data are hence needed to perform a detailed analysis. Proxies (samples of
businesses representative of the sector) can also be used to infer how the businesses actually involved in the
life cycle behave. This can be done by using sectorial or national data about the issues of concern assessed.
In that case, however, potential rather than actual behaviours of businesses are assessed. Given that sitespecific
data were only collected at the farm level in the SLCA of Canadian milk, upstream suppliers’ behaviours
were hence documented using proxies, and this led to the development of two distinct assessment
frameworks (section 4.3).
4.3. Impact assessment
Whereas an ELCA assesses environmental impacts created by quantified stressors generated by a FU, assessment
of business behaviours in an SLCA refers to “performance reference points” (PRP) to benchmark
observed behaviours against recognised or expected social norms. Assessment of business behaviours based
on expected behaviours or expected results of behaviours, defined as PRP in the Guidelines (UNEP-SETAC,
2009), is broadly used (Ciroth and Franze, 2011; Foolmaun and Ramjeeawon, 2012; Ugaya, 2012).
More specifically, two types of social assessments were conducted depending on the nature of data collected
(site-specific or generic). In the latter, farm supplier behaviours were assessed against internationally
recognised social norms to identify potential social hotspots (i.e., the possibility of encountering risky behaviours
which might negatively impact stakeholders). This approach was named potential hotspot analysis. In
the former, an approach named (social) “specific analysis” was conducted instead by assessing the current
behaviour of dairy farmers to evaluate their degree of social responsibility towards their stakeholders. The
use of some comprehensive, high-quality data and relevant PRPs allowed the assessment of not only risky
behaviours, but also socially committed ones, rated with a four-level semi-quantitative scale (i.e., risky,
compliant, proactive, committed behaviour) developed during the study. This approach, allowing semiquantitative
evaluation of the socioeconomic performance of behaviours of businesses involved in the Canadian
milk life cycle, differs significantly from that used in ELCA. As a consequence, it has a significant impact
on integration and interpretation of results.
4.4. Interpretation
Both the ELCA and SLCA identified hotspots on which the DFC and its members could act. Recommendations
were formulated to foster practices minimising both the negative environmental and social impacts
and improving the sector’s overall environmental and socioeconomic performance. But given the nature of
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