The production of meat presents a significant global environmental challenge 1. Therefore, it is crucial to examine the environmental impacts specifically related to pork, which is the most widely consumed meat globally 2. To comprehensively assess the environmental impact, it is essential to closely examine the complete value chain, including factory farming, slaughter, processing, and distribution. The SPECK project aims to address this aspect by conducting a life cycle assessment of various value chain stages in pork production in Germany, which is ranked as the fourth-largest pork producer 3. This case study focuses on the production of pork halves at a slaughterhouse and aims to determine the underlying environmental impacts. The slaughterhouse primarily raises organic animals, primarily pigs but also includes bovine and sheep. The calculation is based on the functional unit of 1kg carcass weight and is processed with the help of the open-source software OpenLCA. The results of the chosen categories Global Warming, Acidification, and Eutrophication of the method CML baseline are mostly consistent with literature findings 4 5 6. Recognizable is the enormous impact of the specific waste stream of slaughterhouse waste in every impact category’s outcome. Therefore it is important to examine the underlying data and interpret them in alignment with the special use case. Looking at the categories GWP and Acidification, heat and power production and use embody another considerable impact. To make these influences more ecologically acceptable renewable energy production could be an option for improvement.
Treml et al. (Sun,) studied this question.