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

PARALLEL SESSION 5A: FOOD LABELLING 8 th Int. Conference on LCA in the
Agri-Food Sector, 1-4 Oct 2012
Table 3. Stepwise sampling rule
Data type Agri-food products
Primary data (if it is the direct
activity of implementing
company)
Secondary data (if it is the
indirect activity of implementing
company)
Fruit & Vegetables Livestock Aquatic
(1) Number of farms covering at least 50% of the raw materials used for
annual production;
(2) If the number of farms is huge and (1) is not practicable, then sampling
based on square root of the total number of farms can be used (with the
justification after analysing the variation among farms);
(1) Identify the sources of raw materials covering
at least 50% of the raw materials used for annual
production;
(2) Apply the inputs and outputs based on a typical
practice in a particular area at the provincial
level) including yield suggested by the Department
of Agriculture; an adjusted yield (the average
yield from previous 3 years) should be used if
the yield is affected by unusual seasonal factors
at the time of implementing the carbon footprint
(1) Obtain from the
national databases,
which were sourced
from the literature
(Thailand context)
The duration of data collection is generally acceptable to be based on annual production for fruits and
vegetables, or over the life span of animal producing milk or eggs (but if they are predisposed before reaching
its life span then the data collection should be finished by then). But if the yield is fluctuating more than
10%, then it is reasonable to use the data over 3 years of production to capture the variation to achieve good
representative data.
3.2.6. Allocation method
For the allocation of carbon footprint between co-products, physical causality as recommended by
ISO14046:2006 was found to be the most appropriate. Thus, as shown in Table 4, for most cases, allocation
by mass has been selected. Only for certain cases of by-products which might almost have been considered
waste but have been defined now as co-products as some economic value could be obtained by selling them,
economic allocation is proposed.
Table 4. Example of discussed allocation methods
Agri-food product Level Product & Co-products Allocation method
Fruit & vegetable Farming Different quality levels/grades Mass
Processing Body, core and shells Economic (if used as the
raw material for another
product system)
Livestock Farming Different sizes of chicken Mass (whole body)
Slaughtering Different portions or parts of chicken Mass (with bone)
meat
Body and offal-skeleton-blood-feathers Economic
Processing Used cooking oil (used for biodiesel) Carbon footprint value = 0
Aquatic Farming Different sizes of fish Mass (whole body)
Processing Fillet and bone-skin Economic
Body and head-shell Economic
3.2.7. Materiality and cut-off rules
Materiality is defined based on a value of 1% of the total carbon footprint. Items contributing lesser than
1% of the total carbon footprint can be cut off, but the cut-off must not be higher than 5% of the total carbon
footprint. This is consistent with other national standards such as PAS 2050 (UK) and TS Q0010 (Japan).
3.2.8. Display of carbon footprint label
The companies proposed an idea to have a logo of the carbon footprint label without displaying a figure,
but having a commitment to reduce the value when extending the license. This implies that the verifier and
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