March 5, 2008

 

UK study proves lower gas emissions in pork transport than entire production process

 

 

A recent study in the UK probed on the environmental impacts of pig production and delivery, proving that the transport of meat causes less than 1 percent greenhouse gas emissions than the entire production chain.

 

As retail outlets in the UK are requesting for proper documentation of the environmental aspects of products, terms like ''food miles'' and ''carbon footprint'' are getting more popular.

 

Food Miles refers to specification indicated in (g CO²) and measures the amount of greenhouse gas emissions during the transport of foodstuffs from the producer to the consumer.

 

Carbon Footprint is the entire life cycle of a product and its greenhouse gas emissions. It covers the entire value chain of a product.  In the case of pork, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) covers CO² and its equivalents.

 

To validate the environmental impacts of pig production, the agricultural faculty of the University of Aarhus in Denmark has carried out a study on Danish, Dutch and British pork.

 

The university analysed one kilo of pork for greenhouse gas emissions for the three most important UK pork producers in the entire production chain and for the Danish and Dutch products only in the transport phase.

 

In the computation of greenhouse gas emissions, the soy growing in Argentina, the feed production in Denmark and the entire pig production chain including fertiliser production, slaughtering and meat dispatch were included.

 

A realistic value of greenhouse emissions was derived from adding all emission values.

 

The emphasis of environmental considerations lies in the life cycle analysis from the production phase to the delivery of the animals to the slaughterhouse.

 

The researchers underscored that the transport of meat causes less emissions, less than 1 percent, of the entire emissions in the production chain.

 

According to the life cycle analysis, 1 kilogramme of pork contributes 3.6kg CO² equivalents to global warming. To illustrate, it is just similar to replacing a normal 60-watt lamp with an energy saving lamp burning for an hour provides a yearly reduction of 13kg of greenhouse emissions.

 

When transporting the product to farther areas, the amount increases to 3.7-3.8kg CO² equivalents per kg of pork.

 

This substantiates that Food Miles does not have much of an environmental effect.

 

The study also revealed no significant difference between Danish, Dutch and British greenhouse gas emissions for pork.