Life Cycle Assessment and Environmental Concerns

We’ve discussed the big business of beef production. But did you know that according to the USDA Economic Research Service (ERS), the total U.S. beef consumption in 2012 was 25.8 billion pounds, and the retail equivalent value of the U.S. beef industry was $85 billion? That is a substantial amount. Bigger the industry, the bigger the fight against it. Especially, as public concerns grow regarding environmental sustainability and climate change. The beef industry is just one of many contributors to the total greenhouse gas (GHG) inventory. This article is not here to debate climate change or beef’s impact. We have our opinions based on science and research, but will save that for another day. The main objective of this article is to highlight what the beef industry is currently doing in an attempt to determine if the public’s concerns are justified. Thus, leading to life cycle assessments.

What is a life cycle assessment? Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a method of analyzing the environmental impacts of a given product by accounting for ALL the impacts that occur along the full chain. For beef cattle production, a full LCA would account for all impacts due to feed production (e.g. emissions from soil, fossil fuel combustion in farm equipment), the cattle (e.g. enteric fermentation, manure emissions), processing and transportation (e.g. emissions from packing plants, fossil fuel combustion from trucks), and secondary emission sources (e.g. emissions from the production of fertilizers).

The beef council is currently researching the accuracy of the current standards set forth by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) pointing out that the guidelines have a considerable amount of variations in the beef system standard. The industry has highlighted how it is difficult to analyze an animal agricultural system, such as the beef cattle segment. The diversity of management systems across operations and segments of the industry, as well as the biogeochemical processes involved, contributions to the the challenge.

So, what does all this jargon mean? It means the beef industry and researchers are currently taking all aspects of beef cattle into consideration in regards to the effect on greenhouse gases and the environment. More suggestions have been made to expand the impacts to other environmental emissions, such as reactive nitrogen, and economic and social concerns. In addition, LCAs for beef should consider differences in geographic location, system boundaries, allocation methods, functional units and the methodologies used to estimate environmental impacts. Arguments have been made that ignoring the above considerations could lead to inappropriate comparisons and conclusions.

It really is like splitting hairs. But the import take away is that researchers and scientists are fighting for the beef industry and promoting proper science and analysis when it comes to the environmental impact. Most operations value the environment and the impact they have on it. After all, we depend on nature just as much, if not more, than anyone else.