ENVIRONMENT: Carbon footprint under scrutiny
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’ which 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. This is 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.
In the second phase, 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. CCFRA is 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.
