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
23. Influence of allocation methods and system boundaries in LCA of
broiler production
Edivan Cherubini 1,* , Vamilson Prudêncio da Silva Junior 2 , Sebastião Roberto Soares 1 , Marco Antônio
Santos 3
1 Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Florianópolis, Brazil, 2 Empresa de Pesquisa Agropecuária e Extensão
Rural de Santa Catarina, Florianópolis, Brazil, 3 Eng. Agrônomo - Especialista em Gestão Ambiental
Agroindustrial, Brazil, Corresponding author. E-mail: cherubini@ens.ufsc.br
Although life cycle assessment is regulated by the ISO 14040 series, there are still several issues, such as
described by Reap et al. (2008), in an LCA study that might generate questions and discussions. Definitions
as system boudaries or allocation for example, which may induce to a misleading comparison between LCA
studies. To develop this study we evaluated the broilers production in southern Brazil, ranging the composition
of the chicken diet in two scenarios: (i) feeds with use of by-products derived in the abattoir process
(animal origin), and (ii) substitution of by-products by an increase of soybeans (vegetable broiler). First were
evaluated the broiler with the system boundary comprising the extraction of raw materials used for growing
grain in the diet of chickens to the farm gate, and then were expanded the boundaries to the port for export,
including the slaughtering process. This change in the boundaries makes necessary the use of allocations
methods in the abattoir stage which depending of the adopted procedure adds high sensitivity in the final
LCA results. Luo et al. (2009) studied the allocation’s influence in LCA of ethanol from corn and concluded
that the results are highly sensitive to the allocation method and a challenge from a scientific point of view.
Therefore, the aim of this paper is to demonstrate the difference in the final results in a product’s LCA using
two different methods of allocation, mass and economic in the vegetable broiler, also intending to demonstrate
the importance of defining the system boundaries. For the broiler with animal protein were used the
mass allocation. The functional units were a ton of broilers live weight and a ton of broiler slaughtered, eviscerated
and frozen at the port. The impact categories used for life cycle impact assessment were global
warming potential from CML 2 baseline 2000 method plus the total cumulative energy demand. The results
showed that the broiler feed with chicken by-products (animal protein) has a better environmental performance
than the chicken with vegetable diet (without chicken by-products) for the evaluated impact categories.
When the system boundary is increased for the broiler slaughtered at the port for export, it shows the high
sensitivity of the results depending on the allocation procedure used in the slaughter process the outputs can
either improve as getting worse the environmental performance of the vegetable broiler, as shown in Table
01 and Figure 01.
References
Associação Brasileira de Normas Técnicas – ABNT, 2009. NBR ISO 14044 Gestão Ambiental – Avaliação
do ciclo de vida – Requisitos e Orientações. Brasil.
Luo, L., van der Voet, E., Huppes, G., Udo de Haes, H. A., 2009. Allocation issues in LCA methodology: a
case study of corn-stover-based fuel ethanol. International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment, 14, 529-
539.
Reap, J., Roman, F., Duncan, S., Bras, B., 2008. A survey of unresolved problems in life cycle assessment:
Part 1: goal and scope and inventory analysis. International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment, 13, 290-
300.
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