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

GROUP 1, SESSION A: ANIMAL PRODUCTION SYSTEMS 8 th Int. Conference on LCA in the
Agri-Food Sector, 1-4 Oct 2012
3. Animal- and environmentally friendly beef production: a conflict?
Martina Alig * , Florian Grandl, Johanna Mieleitner, Thomas Nemecek, Gérard Gaillard
Agroscope Reckenholz-Tänikon Research Station ART, Reckenholzstrasse 191, 8046 Zürich, Switzerland,
Martina Alig. E-mail: martina.alig@art.admin.ch
Meat production faces many challenges today, like consumer demand for animal friendly production systems,
the food supply of a growing world population and the diminishment of the environmental impacts of
meat production. In order to provide a solid basis for decisions, the impacts of different production systems
have to be quantified. This contribution presents a study of different beef production systems in Switzerland
and in countries exporting to Switzerland as basis for the design of purchasing strategies. The data were derived
from model farms of the project LCA-FADN (Hersener et al., 2011). For Switzerland, three production
systems were analysed: A conventional bull fattening system and two animal friendly suckler cow systems (a
conventional and an organic one). Additionally, a conventional bull fattening system in Germany and a very
extensive suckler cow system in Brazil were analysed. The functional unit was kg meat ready for sale at
point of sale.
The results show that for all systems the agricultural stage dominates the environmental impacts (Fig. 1). The
most important contributions are the application of fertilisers and from field emissions, animal emissions and
for the bull fattening systems the purchase of concentrates. Comparing the Swiss systems, the most intensive
production system (conventional bull fattening) has the lowest impacts per kg live weight (LW) for most
categories analysed (see also Alig et al., 2011). Exceptions are the categories deforestation, ecotoxicity and
resource use potassium, where the conventional bull fattening system has the highest results, as well as resource
use phosphorus (2 nd highest results). This is due to the use of concentrate feeds with soy beans from
Brazil compared to the mainly grass-based feeding in the suckler cow systems. The reason for the higher
environmental impacts of the suckler cow systems is the general design of the production system itself: in a
suckler cow system, the mother cow only serves to produce meat, whereas in a conventional bull fattening
system the parent animal produces milk and meat. Therefore, its environmental impacts are allocated between
these two products, whereas in the suckler cow systems, the full environmental load of the mother cow
is allocated to meat production. This is especially apparent with methane emissions, which are more than
60% higher in the suckler cow systems than in the conventional bull fattening system (Fig. 2).
The German bull fattening system is mostly similar to or a little bit lower than the Swiss conventional system.
It is more intensive than the Swiss system, i.e. more based on concentrates and maize silage. The Brazilian
production system is a special case: it is very extensive, uses almost no external inputs but huge land
area. This influences the results: in categories linked with the use of external inputs as energy demand, resource
use or ecotoxicity the Brazilian system has very low impacts. On the other hand, it has very high results
for land competition and deforestation and therefore also high values for eutrophication. Due to the long
fattening period (over two years), water use and methane emissions of this system are also high.
In summary, there are no clear advantages for a certain system. The animal friendly suckler cow systems
stand out due to their low use of arable land and their ability to mitigate the competition for food between
man and animals. In order to have advantages in categories like energy demand and resource use, a suckler
cow system has to be really extensive (e.g. Brazil). In Switzerland, the animal friendly suckler cow systems
had overall higher environmental impacts than the conventional bull fattening system. This is to a great deal
due to the system design, where the full environmental impact of the mother cow is allocated to the meat
production. In order to develop animal and environmental friendly production systems, alternative systems
have to be contemplated, e.g. a combined milk and meat production with dual purpose cows.
References
Alig et al., 2011. Ökologische Bewertung von Rind-, Schweine- und Geflügelfleisch. Schlussbericht Forschungsinitiative
COOP-ART. In preparation.
Hersener, J.-L., Baumgartner, D.U., Dux, D. (Eds.), 2011. Zentrale Auswertung von Ökobilanzen landwirtschaftlicher
Betriebe (ZA-ÖB). Forschungsanstalt Agroscope Reckenholz-Tänikon ART,
Zürich/Ettenhausen.
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