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 | | CARBON FOOTPRINT OF BRITISH FOOD UNDER THE SCRUTINY OF A NEW ENVIRONMENTAL PARTNERSHIP | | | ADAS | | 01/02/2008 | | | Environmental consultancy ADAS is working with Defra and the Carbon Trust to monitor the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions created by the food supply chain.
Every food product has an impact on the environment via its 'carbon footprint'.
This is calculated by measuring the GHG outputs at each stage of the food supply chain - from farm production through the manufacturing process to the final product.
Defra and the Carbon Trust are currently working with the British Standards Institution (BSI) to develop a robust, consistent approach for measuring GHGs (a Publicly Available Standard or PAS) which organisations can use to calculate and reduce the GHG emissions of the products that they manufacture, buy or sell.
ADAS has been appointed to lead a two-phase project that will test and apply the approach. Firstly, ADAS will test the draft BSI methodology for GHG measurement on a range of commodity foods, including beef, lamb, and bread wheat.
Proposals will be put forward for further development of the methodology.
In the second phase of work, ADAS will apply the newly modified and improved measurement system to a new range of products, including chicken meat and strawberries, and also revisit testing on the original commodities to provide increased accuracy. This will provide a range of GHG 'footprints' at the pre- farm gate stage. Campden and Chorleywood Food Research Association (CCFRA) are testing footprints at the post-farm gate (manufacturing) stage, and by adding these together, so the total GHG of the final processed products can be calculated.
The results will be very valuable to the food industry as they can be used to assess not only the green credentials of different food supply chains and different products, but also the relative efficiency of organic over conventional farming and self-sufficiency over importation. In particular, they will provide an indication of those parts of the food chain that are GHG 'hotspots', to enable carbon reduction strategies to be developed.
Jeremy Wiltshire, ADAS senior consultant, said: "We are very excited about this project - once a PAS is established, it may be applied across a wide range of product categories. It will also provide a tool to predict the environmental impacts of future food production methods, helping the move towards a low-carbon economy.
He explained: "The process of gathering GHG data is fairly complex - we devise a Process Diagram for each product, charting all GHG outputs. It's essential that every component is accounted for, from the fuels burned by the tractor, to gases emitted in soil processes and during storage of commodities."
Phase one of the projects will be completed in March this year and Phase Two will be completed by December. This project is part of a suite of three currently running that are designed to test and inform the PAS as it develops, covering the stages from food production, manufacturing and retailing through to how the consumer stores, prepares and consumes food at home. The research will identify possible limitations of the BSI-PAS method and how these might be overcome. | |
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