The environmental impact of Australian pork production

The Pork CRC has conducted what is claimed to be the first comprehensive study using life-cycle assessment (LCA) to benchmark greenhouse gas emissions from pork across the full production system.

Managed by Stephen Wiedemann of FSA Consulting (pictured), the project included emissions from feed production, housing, manure management and meat processing, and assessed 14 production units across different states and different production systems for at least 12 months.

Average emissions to the farmgate were 3.6 kg CO₂-e/kg live weight pork and 6.36 ±1.03 kg CO₂-e/kg wholesale (chilled bone-in) pork. The lowest modelled emissions were from a Queensland production farm using CAP-CHP systems (1.5 kg CO₂-e /kg LW), which is similar to Queensland chicken meat production (1.3 kg CO₂-e / kg LW).

Pork CRC CEO Dr Roger Campbell noted that deep litter housing resulted in a 38% reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions compared to conventional housing, while biogas capture with heat and power generation resulted in a 31–64% reduction in emissions. Outdoor production in Western Australia also resulted in considerably reduced emissions.

“Also interesting was Stephen’s finding that for similar manure management systems, 88% of the variability in GHG could be predicted from differences in HFC (herd feed conversion), making it the most important production-related indicator of GHG emissions,” Dr Campbell said.

Across the farms, HFC ranged from 2.4 to 3.3 on a live weight basis (3.2 to 4.3 on a carcass weight basis) and feed wastage ranged from 5.5 to 7.5% of total feed used. These values represented 15.2 to 20.4 kg of feed lost per 100 kg of live weight produced. Individual units within farms had HFC values approaching 3.8 on a live weight basis.

“These results show that HFC also influences carbon emissions from pork production, so it’s a double whammy when also considering HFC’s profitability upside,” Dr Campbell said. “Clearly, more needs to be done to reduce feed waste and improve HFC.

“Based on these results, and those from Pork CRC’s benchmarking project, some producers have it under control and others have some way to go.”

Pork CRC’s Dr Rob Wilson said such a comprehensive attributional investigation of pork production from major production regions and different production systems demonstrates the potential for Australia’s pork industry to markedly reduce GHG emissions and move towards Pork CRC’s goal of 1 kg CO₂-e/kg LW.

The report ‘Benchmarking the performance of Australian pork with life cycle assessment’ can be found at http://porkcrc.com.au/research/program-4/program-4-projects/.