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
147. Influence of transport on environmental impacts of the
production chain of poultry in Brazil
Sebastião Roberto Soares 1,* , Vamilson Prudêncio da Silva Junior 2 , Edivan Cherubini 1 , Marco Antônio
Santos 3
1 Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Florianópolis, Brazil, 2 Empresa de Pesquisa Agropecuária e Extensão
Rural de Santa Catarina, 3 Eng. Agrônomo - Especialista em Gestão Ambiental Agroindustrial, Corresponding
author. E-mail: soares@ens.ufsc.br
Brazil is among the five largest exporters of poultry meat (Burnquist et al., 2011, USDA, 2011) solidifying
as one of the majors exporter of livestock products, Brazilian’s production is benefited by favourable climatic
conditions and its vast territory, besides the high government investment in the sector. These production
chains, such as poultry, pigs and cattle, in particular, are able to produce all raw materials that it’s used
in animal feed. That feature brings interesting advantages for Brazilian companies when evaluated the environmental
impacts of its products since livestock production is responsible for a major impact on the environment
as noted by de Vries and de Boer (2010), so the choice for a more sustainable product can mitigate
some of these impacts. Although the chain can be self-sufficient in production of grains, the large distances
of a continental country between the stages in the life cycle added to the lack of kinds of transportations may
eventually supplant that environmental gain. Thus the aim of this paper is to evaluate from the environmental
point of view, different kinds of transportation and their influences on the productive chain of frozen chicken
for export. We evaluated two scenarios: (A) Poultry produced and exported in South with the grains coming
from the Central West; and (B) Poultry and grains produced in Central West with the exportation placed in
South East. The functional unit is a ton of poultry delivered in the port for exportation. The method used
through the software SimaPro® was the CML 2000 with modifications, from where we choose by the easier
level of communication with the stakeholders, the impact categories of global warming and total cumulative
energy demand. The results of the LCA of the usual scenarios, indicates South Poultry as that with the worse
environmental performance, due the transportation of grains. For the category of global warming the difference
between the South and the Central West, in tons of CO2 equivalent emitted, only from the transportation
of grains and the final product are about 49.6%, with the possibility of this difference decrease 19%.
References
Burnquist, H. L., da Costa, C. C., de Souza, M. J. P., Fassarella, L. M., 2011. Composite Index of Market
Access for the Export of Poultry from Brazil. International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development
(ICTSD), Geneva, Switzerland.
United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), 2011. Livestock and Poultry: World Markets and Trade.
Foreign Agricultural Service.
de Vries, M., de Boer, I.J.M., 2010. Comparing environmental impacts for livestock products: A review of
life cycle assessments. Livestock Science 128, 1-11.
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