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 3. Contributions of the main life cycle stages for Acidification for 1 ton of chicken cooled and packaged
produced in France (FR) and in Brazil (BR) delivered in France.
In the FR system, the most emissions (62%) of substances that contribute to the total acidification potential,
come from ammonia emitted in the chicken house. In the BR system, the ammonia emission in chicken
house is only 39% of the total acidification potential. But on the other hand, in Brazil the stage of feed production
contributes over 44% of emissions of acidifying substances, mainly because of the ammonia emitted
due to the use of urea as a nitrogen fertiliser for maize production.
From an environmental point of view, importing chicken from Brazil rather than producing it in France
with Brazilian soybeans, was better with respect to climate change and land occupation, which are both
global impacts. With respect to acidification, terrestrial ecotoxicity and energy demand chicken imported
from Brazil had larger impacts than the chicken produced in France. It is therefore not simple to answer this
question. If one considers that climate change is the most important environmental issue, then the import of
Brazilian chicken would seem preferable and stopping deforestation in Brazil would strongly reduce the climate
change impact of both Brazilian and French chicken.
5. Conclusion
The grain production stage is the largest contributor to the overall environmental impacts along the
chicken meat supply production chain. In general, recommendations that may improve the environmental
performance of feed crop production will also reduce the impacts of chicken production.
Importing chicken from Brazil rather than producing it in France with Brazilian soybeans, was better with
respect to climate change and land occupation. With respect to acidification, terrestrial ecotoxicity and energy
demand chicken imported from Brazil had larger impacts than the chicken produced in France. If one
considers that climate change is the most important environmental issue, then the import of Brazilian chicken
would seem preferable.
6. References
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