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
678
19. Emergy and life-cycle sustainability of pig meat products
Benedetto Rugani 1,* , Elena Neri 2 , Valentina Niccolucci 3 , Federico M. Pulselli 3 , Simone Bastianoni 2
1 Environmental evaluation & management, Public Research Centre Henri Tudor (CRPHT) - Resource Centre
for Environmental, Technologies (CRTE) 66, rue de Luxembourg - P.B. 144, L-4002, Esch-sur-Alzette,
Luxembourg, 2 Ecodynamics Group, Dept. of Chemistry, University of Siena. via A. Moro, 2 – 53100 Siena
– Italy, 3 Ecodynamics Group, Dept. of Chemistry, University of Siena, via della Diana, 2A – 53100 Siena,
Italy, * Corresponding author. E-mail: benedetto.rugani@tudor.lu
The effects of globalisation have inevitably an impact on food choices in relation to mass produced at low
cost and greater usability at the expense of local products, which are often more expensive but with higher
quality. One of these examples is represented by the meat of Cinta Senese, which is a typical pig race of the
rural area of Siena, Italy. The breeding and production of this race is very different from that of the intensive
white race (Large White). Indeed, Cinta Senese is reared in an almost completely natural way, within forests
and usually without using industrial fodder (Basset-Mens et al., 2006). The aim of this work is to assess the
sustainability of pig meat products by explicitly focusing on the breeding phase. We have compared the two
races through the application of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and eMergy analyses. In this connection,
eMergy (Odum, 1996) is considered to be complementary to LCA allowing for a broad assessment of resource
consumptions and also of social and economic issues (Rugani et al., 2011). As shown in Fig.1, the
application of LCA highlights that the production of 1 kg of Cinta Senese meat has lower potential impacts
than the production of Large White within a set of impact categories considered (i.e. climate change, acidification
and eutrophication). Indeed the production of 1 kg of Cinta Senese pig has a potential climate change
impact of 2.25 kg CO2eq, while for Large White is 3.6 kg CO2eq (Fig.1). A greater discrepancy is observed
on the potential impact related to acidification (0.016 kg SO2eq for Cinta Senese and 0.045 kg SO2 eq for
Large White), while similar scores are depicted for the potential impact on eutrophication (around 0.23 kg
NO3eq). Fertilisers, water and agricultural machinery operations, used for fodder production, are the main
responsible of all environmental impacts in Cinta Senese rearing system. On the other hand, results from
eMergy evaluation show that Cinta Senese is less efficient than the White race in terms of yield. In fact, the
specific eMergy of Cinta Senese was about 3.5 times greater than that of Large White: 7.53E+09 seJ/g and
2.57E+09 seJ/g respectively, this is principally due to the rearing system. During one year of growth, Cinta
Senese living pig weighs 110 kg while Large White 140 kg and the available space for each head is
12.00E+03 m 2 /head vs 0.23E+03 m 2 /head, respectively. Emergy evaluation highlights that the production
system of Cinta Senese, due to the large use of renewable and local resources, generates less direct and indirect
environmental impacts than the Large White breeding (the percent of renewability is 21.03 and 2.15
respectively). The “monetary” value of renewable (R) and non-renewable (N) emergy flows, created by giving
a price to the local environmental eMergy, is 9.80E+03 seJ/€ for Cinta Senese and 8.78E+03 seJ/€ for
Large White. Results highlight higher relative contributions of labour for the production of Cinta Senese,
demonstrating the wider relevance of direct human resources for this extensive system. The present study
points out that it is possible to discuss the three fundamental pillars at the base of the sustainability concept
(environment, society and economy) by using eMergy combined with a life cycle inventory. Emergy evaluation
emphasised the peculiarities of the Cinta Senese system, in comparison to a conventional pig breeding
system of White race pigs, and the importance of the local ecosystem for the entire process dynamics.
References
Basset-Mens, C., van der Werf, H.M.G., Durand, P., Leterme Ph., 2006. Implications of Uncertainty and
Variability in the Life Cycle Assessment of Pig Production Systems. Int. J. Life Cycle Assess. 11, 298-
304.
Dalgaard, R., 2007. The Environmental Impact of Pork Production from a Life Cycle Perspective. Ph.D.
thesis, Aalborg University, Denmark.
Guinèe, J. B., Gorreèe, M., Heijungs, R., Huppes, G., Kleijn, R., de Koning, A., van Oers, L., Wegener
Sleeswijk, A., Suh, S., Udo de Haes, H. A., de Bruijn, H., van Duin, R., Huijbregts, M. A., 2001. Handbook
on Life Cycle Assessment. Operational Guide to the ISO standards, Kluwer Academic Publisher:
Dordrecht, The Netherlands.
Odum, H.T., 1996. Environmental Accounting: Emergy and Environmental Decision Making. Wiley &
Sons, New York, USA.