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

GROUP 5, SESSION B: FOOD PRODUCTS 8 th Int. Conference on LCA in the
Agri-Food Sector, 1-4 Oct 2012
854
131. Harmonising LCA methodology: A collaborative approach in a
search for allocation rules for food sector
Hanna Hartikainen * , Juha-Matti Katajajuuri, Frans Silvenius
MTT Agrifood Research Finland, 00790 Helsinki, Finland,
hanna.hartikainen@mtt.fi
Corresponding author. E-mail:
There are several general and more specific life cycle assessment (LCA) calculation guides. However, the
food sector is lacking a common guide that is taking into account the special features of the sector and, thus,
giving practical and harmonised guidelines for calculating food products’ footprints. There are few initiatives,
such as, the methodology for food products structured by the European Food SCP Round Table. Another
initiative is the Finnish project called “Foodprint” (2009–2012). The project’s aim is to create harmonised
and practical attributional LCA methodology and guidelines for, particularly Finnish, food sector. The
key objectives of the project are: 1) to actively follow and influence the harmonisation of LCA methods both
internationally and nationally, 2) to involve Finnish food chain actors into the development process (via pilots,
steering group meetings, workshops, seminars), and 3) to attain more supply chain specific data from
the entire food chain. The last target is both to improve the food chain’s operations and to give more both
reliable and comparable information to consumers of the environmental impacts of the food product in question.
When drafting the Finnish LCA methodology for food products one central question found out to be the allocation
rules, especially in the multi-output systems. As well known, LCA’s aim is to assess environmental
impacts associated with all the stages of a product's lifecycle. The problem is that allocation is lacking unambiguous
basis and, thus, jeopardising the credibility of the LCA methodology. Allocation decisions are
easily influenced by the analysts’ perspectives and worldviews and, thus, there are arguments from different
angles whether, for instance, economic, biophysical or mass-based allocations are suitable or not in different
case-studies/decision-making situations.
The discussion about allocation methods has been going on and on in the research community but methods’
usefulness in reality is not always fully considered. Therefore, the actual barriers for the acceptable (depends
on the viewer) allocation methods are easily forgotten. In the Foodprint project, besides a broad literature
review and active following of international discussion on allocation methods, there have been several discussions
with the Finnish food chain actors to discover allocation methods that are simultaneously comprehensive,
suitable and practical. In these discussions, for instance, biophysical allocation (read e.g. IDF 2010:
allocation between milk and beef (Appendix B)) raised interest but its complexity and limited use were considered
its definite drawbacks. Additionally, internationally widely preferred economic allocation was seen
problematic for many reasons. First of all, the market prices fluctuate and are easily influenced by various
external factors. Secondly, if earlier prices (e.g. products’ values prior to any further processing) are used,
these prices depend on producers’ pricing strategies, and thus, not on the ‘actual values’ of products. These
prices are also often trade secrets. All in all, in economic allocation the allocation proportions are usually
heavily influenced by many factors. Therefore, in order to improve the appropriateness of the use of economic
allocation one should pay more attention to its uncertainties and weaknesses - at least uncertainties
should be revealed when communicating the results.
Another important issue brought into the discussion by the Finnish food chain actors was that in order to
receive harmonised results one needs strict allocation rules instead of rules that are loose and open to interpretations.
It was stated that since food sector comprises several different food products, it would be best to
agree on the best allocation methods or on the least bad alternatives in a more case specific level. This leads
us closer to the product category rules’ (PCRs’) ideology, i.e. closer to product specific rules. Furthermore, it
was stated by food chain actors that these more case specific discussions should also take into account different
types of food product chains in order to attain more uniform allocation rules.
Altogether, the aim of the discussions and preferred practices in Finland is not to differentiate Finnish practices
from international practices. On the contrary, the aim is to strengthen the international harmonisation
and, thus, to share Finnish experiences and discuss them. We believe that the attempt to harmonise LCA
calculation, to fully understand the weaknesses of allocation practices, and to find more appropriate approaches
requires collaboration among the research community and, moreover, strong inclusion of the food
chain actors into these discussions.