Abstract
This D4.4 LCA and Social-LCA report is the outcome of task 4.5. This task evaluates the environmental and social impacts of the selected food supply chain case studies in the VALUMICS project. The selected case studies focus on specific instances of salmon, beef and dairy supply chains. Life cycle assessment (LCA) was adopted as the evaluation tool in this task. It will use a holistic approach for system modelling of selected food supply chains. The chain will be defined in terms of raw materials (input) supply, primary production on farm, food processing, distribution and retail, and consumption stages. Moreover, descriptions of the selected case studies' food supply chains are included. In the LCA work, we defined a standard set of LCA rules for use across all studies (system boundary, functional unit, data quality, geographical specificity, calculation methods in the absence of observed data). For each case study, activity data has been taken from stakeholders in food supply chains or collated from secondary data sets. The environmental impact assessment covers all key impacts governed by EU legislation / policy such as: greenhouse gas emissions (European Climate Change Programme), freshwater eutrophication (Water and Nitrate Framework Directives), acidification (Air Quality Directive, Ammonia regulations). The social impacts will focus on worker stakeholder groups in UNEP-SETAC social LCA guidelines, with the consideration of data availability across the entire food supply chain. The interpretation of LCA focusses on identifying hotspots within the food supply chains. These hotspots are associated with different stakeholders at each stage in the chain. In order to improve the sustainability performance of selected food supply chains, recommendation and future scenarios are provided.
