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

PARALLEL SESSION 7A: CONSUMERS 8 th Int. Conference on LCA in the
Agri-Food Sector, 1-4 Oct 2012
tance of the categories, but with the addition of the need to add information on the use of antibiotics, due to
the concern about antibiotic resistance. Thus use of antibiotics was added to the same category as use of
pesticides, as is further discussed in section 4.
2.2. Development of the criteria
For each indicator, criteria for three levels of environmental or animal welfare ‘harm’ were developed,
judged as the level of complexity for the target group and corresponding to the well-known traffic light symbols
used to communicate the levels. The criteria were developed on a relative scale, hence describing best
and worst in class, rather than using absolute sustainability thresholds, which are very difficult to define on
this detailed level. Data on CF, biodiversity impacts, use of antibiotics and pesticides and animal welfare (the
chosen indicators, see section 2.1) for the products included in the guide were collected from the literature,
trade associations and experts. From this information criteria were developed with the aim of differentiating
between different types of production systems. The ambition in the meat guide was to develop the criteria for
all indicators using a life cycle perspective related to the functional unit of 1 kg of product (bone-free meat in
the case of meat). This proved to be difficult for some indicators due to methodological problems and lack of
essential data. Therefore, in this first version of the meat guide it was necessary to take a pragmatic approach
and develop the criteria considering current data availability and calculation methods, as well as certification
schemes for verification (see sections 2.3-2.6).
2.3. Carbon footprint
The CF criteria were chosen to reflect the inherent variation in GHG emissions from the production of
different types of protein sources based on biophysical differences in either 1) Directly consuming the vegetal
protein, 2) feeding it to monogastric animals and losing a large part of the energy; or 3) producing meat
from mainly cellulose using ruminants, which cause large methane emissions. Numerical results from numerous
life cycle assessment (LCA) studies were used to set the boundaries (Röös, 2012; Röös et al., 2012).
A green light was given to foods with CF less than 1.5 kg CO2e/kg product, which includes most plantbased,
protein-rich foods such as legumes. Game animals not given extra feed were also given a green light,
based on the reasoning that wildlife methane emissions belong to the natural ecosystem and are not anthropogenic.
This reasoning holds only as long as the amount of wild game is kept at natural levels. A yellow
light was given to products that cause emissions of 1.5-12 kg CO2e /kg product. These include eggs, chicken,
pork and cheese. Products with CF greater than 12 kg CO2e /kg product, i.e. meat such as beef and lamb
from ruminant livestock, were given a red light. The variation in CF between studies can be large for the
same product (± 50%) depending on differences in production systems, system boundaries and calculation
methods. However, the CF for the products within the three levels still stayed within the wide boundaries of
green, yellow and red light, making the need for more detailed data collection redundant for this indicator.
2.4. Biodiversity
Including impacts on biodiversity in LCA is challenging for many reasons. Biodiversity is a broad concept
and includes diversity at gene, species and ecosystem level, so measuring this complexity for use in
LCA is difficult. In addition, the impact on biodiversity from different types of land use varies considerably
depending on the original habitat type, production intensity and surrounding landscape (Henle et al., 2008).
Recent work based on the UNEP/SETAC life cycle initiative proposed a conceptual framework for land use
in LCA (Milà i Canals et al., 2007). Building on this framework, others have proposed methodology for developing
characterisation factors for biodiversity, as well as actual factors (Schmidt, 2008; de Baan et al.,
2012). The characterisation factors describe the impact on biodiversity as a change in species richness when
transforming a reference land use to different types of land use practices such as pasture, annual crops, agroforestry,
etc.
Since the meat guide includes products from different countries, the impacts on biodiversity needed to be
assessed on a scale that encompassed global effects, but was still detailed enough to enable differentiation
between production systems. The ambition in the meat guide was to use global characterisation factors for
biodiversity in order to assess the product’s biodiversity impact per kg of product. Owing to time limitations,
it was not possible in this first version of the meat guide to develop specific characterisation factors for Sweden
and the factors found in the literature were either too blunt to be used in the meat guide (no differentiation
between production systems, e.g. organic versus conventional production) or referred to baseline scenar-
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