Explaining the Differences between the Environmental Impacts of 44 French Artisanal Cheeses

Abstract

Cheese production causes significant environmental impacts, which have to be reduced. In France, a lot of different cheeses are available, made from different milks but also from different cheese technologies. The goal of this study was to understand the origin of the environmental impact variation between cheeses made from different technologies and milks and produced using different ripening practices. To do so, the environmental impacts of 44 different types of French artisanal cheese, all produced under protected designation of origin (PDO) labels, were assessed using the life cycle assessment. Cheese technologies were fully described and two ripening scenarios were investigated. Results show that the differences of environmental impacts between cheeses mainly come from: the milk type (cow, goat, or sheep), the milk amount needed to produce one kilogram of cheese, the energetic performance of the ripening room, and the ripening time. Such results could be useful to cheesemakers to identify the origin of the environmental impacts of their products and to implement effective actions to reduce them. According to the results, innovations leading to the reduction in electrical consumption during ripening are interesting to explore in order to increase the environmental performance of a cheese.

Towards sustainable Cleaning‐in‐Place (CIP) in dairy processing: Exploring enzyme‐based approaches to cleaning in the Cheese industry

“…It is important to note that the water used during pasteurization for steam generation can be reused in some cases for subsequent pasteurization, while the water used for CIP is typically discarded after use. In an LCA of 44 different artisanal French cheeses for their environmental impact, it was revealed that CIP was responsible for consumption of 10%–29.5% of total water utilized during cheese production (Cortesi et al., 2022). Hence, we can consider CIP to be a major consumer of water during processing.…”

“…The cheese industry, which falls under the broader umbrella of dairy processing, utilizes roughly a quarter of the world's raw milk production and is known to be an energy‐intensive process (Xu et al., 2009) and particularly, in the European Union over 39% of the total milk produced is utilized for cheese making (Cortesi et al., 2022). The prevalent impacts of energy and water usage, as well as the use of chemicals in CIP processes, on the broader dairy industry also have implications for the cheese industry.…”