This talk will cover some case studies of work with livestock and summarize the current FAO project which is the Livestock Environmental Assessment and Performance Partnership. We have been working with the dairy and swine industries for the past 6 years to assess the environmental sustainability of their production operations. Our initial work focused on estimating the carbon footprint, which we found to be 2.1 kg CO2e/ kg milk consumed (see Figure 1 for the supply chain contribution) and 8.8 kg CO2e/ kg boneless pork consumed. Both estimates include the effects of food loss in the supply chain. As we broadened the number of environmental categories to include human and ecotoxicity, the importance of pesticides in the potential impacts increases. For example, the chemical cyfluthrin, used for fly control in some dairies has extremely high aquatic toxicity and therefore any improper use poses significant risk to nearby water bodies.

Life cycle assessment for evaluating the sustainability of feed and livestock production

248th National Meeting (2014)

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