Environmental Impacts of the Beef Production Chain in the Northeast of Portugal Using Life Cycle Assessment

Abstract

The beef supply chain has multiple negative impacts on the environment. A method widely used to measure impacts from both the use of resources and the emissions generated by this sector is the life cycle assessment (LCA) (ISO 14040). This study aimed to evaluate a semi-intensive system (SIS) and an extensive organic system (EOS), combined with two different slaughterhouses located in the northeast of Portugal. The studied slaughterhouses are similar in size but differ in number of slaughters and in sources of thermal energy: natural gas (Mng) vs. biomass pellets (Mp). Four categories of environmental impact were evaluated: global warming potential (GWP), acidification potential (AP), eutrophication potential (EP), and photochemical ozone creation potential (POCP). As expected, higher impacts were found for SIS for all studied impact categories. Slaughterhouse activities, fertilizer production, and solid waste treatment stages showed little contribution when compared to animal production. Concerning the slaughterhouses activities, the main sources of environmental impact were the use of energy (electric and thermal) and by-products transportation.

Sustainable Local Exploitation and Innovation on Meat Products Based on the Autochthonous Bovine Breed Jarmelista

“…Habitat destruction and degradation due to human land use for agriculture or livestock, as well as land abandonment are expected to remain the most significant cause of biodiversity loss, which allied to all environmental issues of pollution has a tremendous impact on rural areas. As global meat production and consumption is increasing, high amounts of energy and water are being used to supply the needs and, consequently, large quantities of waste and gaseous emissions are being released into the environment [40]. The sustainable use of resources and the need to balance the economic growth and the environmental preservation has become increasingly important and, as a result, the agro-industrial sector has been pressured to minimise its negative impacts in the environment.…”

Environmental Sustainability in Beef Production and Life Cycle Assessment as a Tool for Analysis

“…In the food area, LCA has been used as an environmental management tool in several industries, such as milk production (Salvador et al 2016;Pirlo and Lolli 2019), pork production (Wiedemann, McGahan, and Murphy 2018;McAuliffe et al 2017), beef production (Presumido et al 2018;Asem-Hiablie et al 2019) and other agricultural products (Borsato et al 2019;Guarino et al 2019). Despite the great advantages of using the LCA, it has some limiting points.…”

“…The major contributors are carbon dioxide, which is largely the result of burning fossil fuels; nitrous oxide emitted by manure, urine and through the application of nitrogen fertilizers; and methane that is generated from the digestion of ruminants and waste manure. In this sense, studies on LCA in the beef production showed that the methane generated from the intestinal tract of the animals can contribute around 60% for the GHG (Presumido et al 2018). In an attempt to minimize the percentages of emission, some techniques have been used to intensify the production of pastures and reduce the fattening time of animals until slaughter (White et al 2014) and consequently reduce GHG emissions.…”

Recent Contributions of Agricultural Economics Research in the Field of Sustainable Development

“…If pro-capita consumption of animal-based products in less-developed countries was to catch up with that if developed countries, this would imply a tremendous increase in global meat production, which has already exceeded 300 million tonnes per year (FAOSTAT 2017), and the environmental impacts of diets. Literature has indeed highlighted how animal production and especially beef has the highest environmental impacts [85,86] due to the large amount of arable land, water, and raw material needed for its production [87]. Indeed, a study by de Vries and de Boer [38] estimated, on the basis of a meta-analysis of previous studies, that the production of 1 kg of beef is the most land and energy intensive production and also the one with the highest global warming potential (GWP), with pork and chicken meat following beef.…”