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
Table 1. Agricultural production data for three pig production systems in Switzerland (CH conv., label, organic),
Germany (DE) and Denmark (DK).
CH DE DK
conv. label organic
Rate of turnover [number/year] 3.0 3.1 2.9 2.7 3.9
Mortality [%] 1.29 1.12 1.12 3.0 4.3
Live weight at start [kg LG] 24 24 24 25 30
Live weight at slaughter [kg LG] 102 100 103 115 102
Length of fattening period [d] 106 103 110 128 89
Daily gains [g/d] 740 740 720 700 810
Feed conversion ratio 1: [kg/kg] 2.87 3.04 2.85 3.00 2.76
Live weight gain per place unit [kg LW/year] 234 236 229 243 269
Floor type partly partly partly fully slatted 50:50 partly /
slatted slatted slatted
fully slatted
Outdoor run no yes yes no no
Table 2. Agricultural production data for three chicken production systems in Switzerland (CH conv., label,
organic) and France (FR) and Brazil (BR CW and BR S).
CH FR BR
conv. label organic CW S
Length of fattening period [d] 35 56 21 + 42 a 40 42 42
Rate of turnover [number/year] 8.69 5.79 7.45 6.0 6.0 6.4
Break between production cycles [d] 7 7 7 20.8 18.8 15.0
Live weight at slaughter [kg LG] 1.92 1.85 1.75 1.92 2.40 2.48
Daily gains [g/d] 54 32 27 47 56 58
Feed conversion ratio 1: [kg/kg] 1.65 2.17 2.42 1.87 1.89 1.86
Mortality [%] 3.05 2.50 3.50 4.1 4.2 4.4
Outdoor run [m 2 per animal] - 2.00 2.05 - - -
a A 21-day rearing phase takes places in a second building parallel to fattening.
Table 3. Considered environmental impacts (Nemecek et al., 2010).
Category Environmental impact
Resource use Demand for non-renewable energy resources (oil, coal and lignite, natural gas and uranium), using
management the upper heating or gross calorific value for fossil fuels according to Hischier et al., (2010).
Global warming potential over 100 years (according to IPCC, 2007).
Ozone formation potential (so-called “summer smog” according to the EDIP2003 method,
Hauschild und Potting, 2003).
Use of phosphorus and potassium resources is based on life cycle inventory (LCI) data
Land competition is based on LCI data according to the CML01 method (Guinée et al., 2001)
Deforestation is calculated based on LCI data as the difference of area transformed from forest and
area transformed to forest
Total water use (blue) is calculated on LCI data
Nutrient Eutrophication potential (impact of the losses of N and P to aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems, ac-
management cording to the EDIP2003 method, Hauschild und Potting, 2003).
Acidification potential (impact of acidifying substances released into ecosystems, according to the
EDIP2003 method, Hauschild und Potting, 2003).
Toxicity Terrestrial and aquatic ecotoxicity potentials (according to the CML01 method, Guinée et al., 2001).
Human toxicity potential (impact of toxic pollutants on human health, according to the CML01
method, Guinée et al., 2001).
3. Results
When considering the whole supply chain up to the retail store, agricultural production was found to be
responsible for at least 75% of the environmental impacts in each analysed environmental impact category
(Figure 1 and Figure 2). Post-agricultural processes were of noticeable influence only for the consumption of
non renewable energy and to some extent for global warming potential, ozone formation and human toxicity.
Most of the environmental impacts from post-agricultural processes originated from slaughtering and meat
processing and from transports in case of imported meat (see Mieleitner et al., (2012) for more details).
The major potential of environmental improvement lies in animal production. Therefore, the rest of the
result section focuses only the agricultural processes and refers to the functional unit of 1 kg LW.
Figure 1 and Figure 2 show the differences in environmental impacts between the three Swiss production
systems of pork and chicken meat, respectively (1 kg meat at the retail store). Both show substantial differences
between organic and conventional production in arable land competition (e.g. in pig production:
3.8 m 2 a per kg LW vs. 6.9 m 2 a per kg LW under conventional and organic conditions), nutrient management
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