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
Figure 1. Contributions of the main life cycle stages for Climate Change for 1 ton of chicken cooled and
packaged produced in France (FR) and in Brazil (BR) delivered in France.
For the French chicken, about 33% of greenhouse gas emissions resulted from the use of soybean meal
from Brazil, as well as 24% of energy demand. It is very likely that these values would be lower if other
locally produced protein-rich grains were used, in substitution of Brazilian soybeans, improving thus the
environmental performance of the French chicken.
An interesting effect occurred for energy demand. On average, the Brazilian chicken consumed almost
the same energy per ton of chicken at the slaughterhouse gate regarding French chicken, but due to energy
demand for transportation to France, on delivery in France it required 15% more energy than the French
chicken (Figure 2).
Figure 2. Contributions of the main life cycle stages for Cumulative Energy Demand for 1 ton of chicken
cooled and packaged produced in France (FR) and in Brazil (BR) delivered in France.
Acidification was already higher for chicken production scenarios in Brazil, and transportation increased
acidification by 7%, reaching 18% more acidifying emissions than the French chicken on delivery in France
(Figure 3). A similar phenomenon occurred for terrestrial ecotoxicity.
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