Life cycle assessment of the Australian meat chicken industry

Summary

The meat chicken LCA will provide a comprehensive assessment of the Australian meat chicken industry, covering supply chains from several states and production system types. The assessment will be based on foreground data, i.e. actual data collected throughout the supply chain, from breeding units through to the abattoir docking gate, using two functional units, 1 kg of live bird weight and 1 kg of processed chicken at the abattoir gate. Data will be collected from a total of seven supply chains and will be aggregated data supplied by five meat chicken companies and numerous grow out farms and contractors.

Program

Chicken Meat

Research Organisation

FSA Consulting

Objective Summary

Objectives of the LCA research include, but are not limited to: 1. Quantifying the environmental impacts of meat chicken production, specifically: Energy usage Water usage Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions 2. Providing robust data to allow comparison of chicken meat with other similar products, based on environmental performance and efficiency of production. 3. Identifying areas within the supply chain where improvements can be made to reduce resource usage and environmental impacts. 4. Establishing baseline data for benchmarking and reporting industry performance. 5. Reviewing existing chicken meat LCA literature as well as the uptake of previous RIRDC CME environemtnal research into legislation, regulations and guidelines.