Author(s): Belo, Sara ; Dias, Ana Cláudia ; Feliciano, Manuel ; Sousa, Fernando Ruivo de ; Almeida, José Carlos ; Trindade, Henrique ; Arroja, Luís
Date: 2015
Persistent ID: http://hdl.handle.net/10198/17067
Origin: Biblioteca Digital do IPB
Subject(s): Beef; Life cycle assessment; Extensive production; Intensive production; fattening
Beef production has been identified as an important source of environmental impacts. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has been applied worldwide to identify key processes/phases for environmental improvement in beef production. In this study, LCA is used to assess the environmental impacts of beef produced in two different production systems, namely extensive and intensive fattening. A “cradle-to-gate” approach is adopted and the functional unit is 1 kg of beef carcass weight at the farm gate. The results show that the environmental “hot spots” are related with feed production and on-farm related emissions in both systems. The results also suggest that the use of extensive production during the fattening stage has lower environmental impacts per kg of carcass. The largest differences between the two systems were found in marine eutrophication category.
