Life Cycle Assessment

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
   1. Objectives
   2. Learning goals
   3. Teacher page
2. Course content: Life cycle assessment (LCA) of pork chains
   1. What are the environmental impact of food production?
   2. Global warming
   3. GWP of different foods
   4. Nutrient enrichment (eutrophication)
   5. Acidification
3. How to access environmental impact of pork?
   1. LCA of 1 kg Danish Pork
   2. What is included in a LCA?
   3. Phase 1
   4. Phase 2
   5. Phase 3
   6. Phase 4
   7. System expansion and allocation
4. LCA for different production Systems
   1. The Danish standard system
   2. The Danish organic system
   3. The French standard system
   4. The Alternative French system: Porc Basque
   5. Summary of performance and LCA in the four systems
5. Completion
   1. Comments
   2. Self-assessment
   3. Key messages
   4. Further reading and references
   5. Evaluation
   6. Acknowledgement

Objectives

This learning resource provides information on Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) as a tool for estimating the environmental impact of pork production from the farm throughout the industrial foodprocessing to retail and cooking. Through this learning resource you should be able to evaluate the environmental impact of especially pork production in the different parts of the chain, and subsequently get an idea on how different pig production system affects the environment from a LCA perspective.

This learning resource aims for students at B.Sc. level (20 notional study hours; 1 ECTS):

• Read the pages in this learning resource
• Write an article to a pig production magazine and post it on the Comments page. The article should in 300 words summarize your opinions on environmental hotspots in the pork chain from an LCA perspective, and include some differences in relation to two very different pig production systems, i.e. an extensive niche production system and the traditional conventional system.
• Add at least five new definitions in our wiki (on the platform).
• Do the self-assessment.
• Read the key messages.