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

PARALLEL SESSION 6C: POULTRY AND PORK PRODUCTION SYSTEMS 8 th Int. Conference on LCA in the
Agri-Food Sector, 1-4 Oct 2012
sessment was the CML 2 baseline 2000 with modifications. We present results for the following impact
categories: acidification, eutrophication, climate change, terrestrial ecotoxicity, land occupation and total
cumulative energy demand.
3. Results
The results showed that the stage of feed production influenced the potential impacts the most. Second
stage was the chicken production, and the stage that contributes least to the environmental impacts was
slaughter (industrialisation). Table 2 summarises the results of the comparison.
Table 2. Contributions of the main life cycle stages for six impacts for 1 ton of chicken cooled and packaged
produced in France (FR) and 1 ton of chicken cooled and packaged produced in Brazil (BR) and delivered in
France.
Origin of
chicken
France
(FR)
Brazil
(BR)
(75% SO
+
25% CW)
548
Life cycle stage
Acidification
kg SO2eq
Eutrophication
kg PO4eq
Climate
change
t CO2eq
Terrestrial
ecotoxicity
kg 1,4DB
eq
Land occupation
m²a * 1000
Cumulative
energy
demand
Slaughter 0.3 1.6 0.07 0.3 0.07 3.2
Chicken production 27.8 6.6 0.80 1.3 0.23 6.0
Feed production 12.4 12.8 2.30 7.0 3.52 20.8
Total 40.5 21.0 3.17 8.6 3.82 30.0
Slaughter 0.5 1.5 0.05 0.6 0.31 6.5
Chicken production 20.1 4.7 0.59 1.7 0.11 7.3
Feed production 24.3 14.1 1.51 7.0 3.14 17.5
Transport Brazil-
3.0 0.4 0.25 0.6 0.00 4.5
France a
Total 47.9 20.7 2.40 9.9 3.56 35.8
Difference of total Brazil relative
to FR – absolute and (%)
7.4 (18) -0.3 (-1)
-0.77 (-
24)
1.3 (15) 0.26 (-7) 5.8 (19)
Transport Brazil-France relative
to FR (%)
7 2 8 7 0 15
a
Transport by refrigerated truck, ship and train, from Brazil slaughter gate to France. Other transport stages, like feed
transport, chicken transport, inputs transport, etc. are included in earlier stages.
In Table 2, the penultimate line, we highlight how the Brazilian chicken delivered in Europe cause more
(or less) impact than the chicken produced in France, according to each impact category. In the last line, we
highlight just the stage international transport, i.e., how the transport of chicken from Brazil up to France
added on each impact category, related to chicken produced in France. This international transport of chicken
stage adds about 7-8% in potential of acidification, climate change and terrestrial ecotoxicity, and 15% of
cumulative energy demand.
4. Discussion
According to our scenarios, for climate change and land occupation it is better to produce chicken in Brazil
and export it to France than to produce the same type of chicken in France. The international transport
stage contributed only 8% to GHG emissions, and therefore, when imported in France, the Brazilian chicken
still had 24% less emissions than the French chicken (Table 2). Fig. 1 shows the mains contributions for
climate change.
GJ