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Life cycle based environmental management and product declarations for food.
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Halberg, Niels Weidema, Bo Pedersen Larsen, Ib Dalgaard, Randi Nielsen, Per Henning Nielsen, Anne Merete Schiefer, Gerhard Rickert, Ursula |
| Copyright Year | 2004 |
| Abstract | Life cycle assessment (LCA) may be used as a tool for environmental management in food production and to document the resource use and environmental impact related to a food product from the soil to the kitchen. This enables the evaluation of the most important environmental problems related to a specific choice by political decision makers, private consumers, professional kitchens, or producers of convenience food. The use of LCA may thus lead to more informed choices by consumers and other decision makers as well as an option for producers in the food chain to improve their processes and document their efforts. The LCA method is standardised in the ISO 14040 series. This paper describes the development of a set of Danish farm types based on a representative sample of 2239 technicaleconomic accounts from farmers divided by soil type, primary enterprise and stocking rate. Within each farm type, a coherent farm model has been established by checking the accounts data on crop rotation, crop yields and input-output balance against the livestock fodder needs. Life Cycle Inventory data for Danish milk production is shown and together with processing data this has been used to demonstrate the different environmental impact attached to three different cheese consumption patters related to packaging. A publicly available Internet database has been established for the resulting environmental data in cooperation with major food companies, which have used these data for e.g. considerations on product declarations and product development. Different options for product declararations on foods have been developed; illustrating how environmental information on foods may be communicated to the customers, using e.g. nutrification, acidification and global warming as parameters. It is demonstrated how the choice of normalisation reference is of crucial importance for the communication. Introduction The environmental impact from agriculture and the food chain is of concern to policy makers and some consumer groups. A number of food companies are, therefore, interested in using environmental assessment in their product development or to be able to document environmental properties of their products if needed. The public regulation of agri-environmental problems has mostly focused on improvements in farm production systems in relation to local effects (e.g. reduction in Nitrate leaching per land unit). This approach does not take into consideration the developments in food processing and consumer choices as well as more global environmental effects. There is a need for a complementary focus on the environmental impact per unit of food produced. Moreover, food consumption is one of the major causes for resource use and environmental impact by modern households (Anonymous, 1996; Wilting et al. 1999; Spangenberg & Lorek, 2002). But the importance of these burdens in the primary production, industrial food processing and kitchen preparation differ among products and it is not easy to predict the environmental consequences of e.g. the increased use of convenience (pre-prepared) food products. Paper for 82nd EAAE seminar: Quality assurance, risk management and environmental control in agriculture and food supply networks. May 14-16, 2003, Bonn. Niels Halberg Side 2 25-03-03 C:\WINDOWS\TEMP\paper Life cycle analysis for documentationII.doc European environmental policy is now partly changing towards a product-oriented approach, which focus on the resource use and environmental impact per produced (and consumed) unit of different products. According to an EU green book this socalled “Integrated Product Policy (IPP) is an approach which seeks to reduce the life cycle environmental impacts of products from the mining of raw materials to production, distribution, use, and waste management. The driving idea is that integration of environ-mental impacts at each stage of the life cycle of the product is essential and should be reflected in decisions of stakeholders” (Anonymous, 2001, p. 5). This approach has been used for a number of years within industrial sectors and recently the Danish government has launched a Product Panel for Food, seeking to create focus on potential environmental improvement of food production and consumption. Likewise, UNEP have also initiated studies of the potential benefits of a life cycle approach for policy development on production and consumption of food and other commodities (Anonymous, 2002; Solgaard, 2002). Thus, a product-oriented approach is relevant for the food industry to provide environmental evaluation and documentation of new products. However, because of the complex nature of the food production chain starting with a large number of different primary producers it is not easy to document the environmental properties of food products. While the well-established ISO 14001 certification includes a commitment to continuous environmental improvements within a company or factory it is not mandatory to report the actual environmental impact per produced unit. The more recent ISO 14040-series offer a comprehensive guideline for a product oriented environmental assessment, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). Life cycle assessment may be used as a tool in environmental management of food production and to document the resource use and environmental impact related to a food product from the soil to the kitchen. This enables the evaluation of the most important environmental problems related to a specific choice by political decision makers, private consumers, professional kitchens, or producers of convenience food. The use of LCA may thus lead to more informed choices by consumers and other decision makers as well as an option for producers in the food chain to improve their processes and document their efforts. In this paper we will describe briefly the idea of LCA and its potential uses for different purposes within the food sector. Then we describe the development of a comprehensive dataset of Danish primary production and give examples of the use for LCA for different purposes. Finally we discuss the potential use of LCA as the basis for product declarations. The LCA methodology The aim of LCA is to facilitate an evaluation of the important resource uses and emissions linked to a given product through all relevant phases of its production and consumption. Fig. 1 gives an overview of the processes from crop and livestock production through food processing to use and disposal by consumers. For each process an inventory should describe the resource inputs needed for the production of one unit of the good in question and the related emissions. Emissions are usually translated into a limited number of impact categories (e.g. acidification, green house gas emissions, eutrophication) where each category shows the total result across the included processes. In order to interpret the importance of the emissions linked to a process or product a normalisation procedure is used as described later. The good in focus (the functional unit) needs to be defined for each LCA and depends on the purpose and on assumptions regarding which substitutions consumers accept. For example, the functional unit “one kg of bread” may come from the purchase of frozen pre-baked rolls Paper for 82nd EAAE seminar: Quality assurance, risk management and environmental control in agriculture and food supply networks. May 14-16, 2003, Bonn. Niels Halberg Side 3 25-03-03 C:\WINDOWS\TEMP\paper Life cycle analysis for documentationII.doc or from a mix of the necessary ingredients and processes for baking the bread at home. Under the assumption that some consumers would substitute one solution for the other it could be relevant to test which had the higher energy use and emissions, as was actually the question asked by a major Scandinavian bread factory. On the other hand, while it may be demonstrated that energy and nutrient related emissions are significantly smaller for 1 kg of soy-protein than one kg of pig-protein few consumers would be willing to accept such a substitution to a large degree. While it may not be necessary to include all processes for a given study (depending on the purpose, see below) in many situations inventory of primary production is necessary in order to interpret the differences between alternative functional units. Fig. 2 illustrates that LCA may be used in different ways depending on the purpose and time frame. Moreover, within operational and tactical time frames the focus may be on specific single products (e.g. for the purpose of declarations, marketing, demands to suppliers) or on broader (generic) applications (e.g. setting product standards in IPP approaches). The longer the time frame (strategic development), the more LCA will be used at a generic level. However, this may well be with the focus on product development within a specific food company, as explained by Nielsen & Wenzel (2002). |
| Starting Page | 555 |
| Ending Page | 565 |
| Page Count | 11 |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://web.agrsci.dk/jbs/bepro/Life%20cycle%20analysis%20for%20documentationII.pdf |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
