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

GROUP 3, SESSION A: LABELLING, CONSUMERS, DIET 8 th Int. Conference on LCA in the
Agri-Food Sector, 1-4 Oct 2012
776
81. Agrifood products: a comparison of existing carbon footprint
systems in the world
Stéphane Le Pochat * , Evelyne Lauren, Roberto Bellino
EVEA, 56 Bd de la Fraternité, 44100 Nantes, France, Corresponding author. E-mail: s.lepochat@eveaconseil.com
In 2011, EVEA and Savin Martinet Associés carried out a study on behalf of the French Food and Agriculture
Ministry (MAAPRAT 2012). The aim of this study was first to compare the different product carbon
footprint (PCF) systems of agrifood products around the world, and second to give a risk analysis of competing
distortion from a world trade point of view.
Thirty-eight PCF systems were checked off. These systems are disseminated worldwide: Europe (France,
Germany, England, Sweden, Switzerland, etc.), North America, Asia, Australia and New Zealand. Distinctions
were made firstly by system category (PCF, labels, or tools), and secondly by origin (public or private,
retailer). From these 38 systems, 14 of them providing existing PCF of agrifood products on the market were
deeply analysed, 10 of which in Europe and 2 in Asia. This consisted in reporting and analysing general information
(country, owner of the system, number of committed enterprises, number of PCF labelled products,
etc.) and more specific information about the structure of the PCF system such as existing PCR, verification
process, tools for computing, underlying database, etc. Furthermore, a comparison of PCF of several
products was carried out. Around 300 PCF of products were reported from the 14 analysed systems and
some detailed comparisons were made for 9 specific products (milk, wine, ham, bread, rice, olive oil, yogurt,
potatoes, and French beans) both within a same system (intra-comparison) and between different systems
(inter-comparison). Table 1 shows an example for the comparison of several milk footprints.
Each time, interpretation has been conducted from these comparisons confronting on one hand the PCF figures
and on the other hand available information related to these PCF (calculation rules, allocation, etc).
Three criteria were defined: level of available information, estimated level of methodological divergence,
objective comparability. For each product and each PCF system, this analysis led to identify the main influencing
parameters (packaging, organic production or not, origin, varieties, recipe, etc.) and their respective
level of influence on the PCF result (as shown on table 1).
Moreover, a juridical analysis was carried out in order to confront the PCF systems to the regulation rules of
the 4 main following international organisations: WTO, OECD, European Union, and FAO. Indeed, regarding
the specific French context about environmental labelling, the issue was: can a mandatory environmental
labelling system for consumer products be authorised on the French market by international organisations?
Regarding the risk of a competing distortion that would be a case of no-compliance with the rules of the
world trade, the main conclusions from this juridical focus are that such systems cannot be imposed as mandatory
by a country except if they fully respect three conditions:
Transparency about the elaboration process of the standard (methodology for calculation): the elaboration
process must reach an international consensus and must be opened to all stakeholders.
No-discrimination about origin: results (PCF) must not lead to discriminating products based on their
production process and geographic origin.
Proportionality of the means regarding the claimed objectives (encourage a sustainable consumption):
such a system must not engage costs that could be judged to be excessive for companies, in particular
SMEs.
The study leads to the following conclusions:
The different PCF systems present a great diversity regarding their respective features and in particular
regarding the applied methodologies
There is a huge variability of the PCF of products, and some methodological divergences have been
demonstrated. Furthermore, very little information is usually available and most of the systems are absolutely
not transparent and thus are not compliant with the only internationally recognised standard (ISO
14020). All these items lead to the conclusion that for a same product different PCF calculated within
different systems are objectively not comparable. This can be problematic for customers when different
systems co-exist in the same market (eg. in France).
For now none of the existing labelling systems could be considered compliant with the rules of the world
trade for a state to make it compulsory.