Department of Environmental Science, Aarhus University, Roskilde, Denmark; Ecodynamics Group, Department of Physical Sciences, Earth and Environment, University of Siena, Italy.
Global Footprint Network, 18 Avenue Louis-Casai, 1219 Geneva, Switzerland.
Sci Total Environ. 2023 Aug 15;886:163960. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.163960. Epub 2023 May 4.
Chicken meat production in the European Union (EU) causes environmental pressures within and beyond the EU, mostly due to feed consumption. The expected dietary shift from red to poultry meat will drive changes in the demand for chicken feeds and the associated environmental impacts, calling for a renewed attention on this supply chain. By performing a break-down analysis based on material flow accounting, this paper assesses the annual environmental burden caused within and outside of the EU by each single feed consumed by the EU chicken meat industry from 2007 to 2018. The increased feed demand required to support the growth of the EU chicken meat industry over the analyzed period caused a 17 % increase in cropland use - 6.7 million hectares in 2018. Instead, CO emissions linked to feed demand decreased by ~45 % over the same period. Despite an overall improvement in resource and impact intensity, chicken meat production was not decoupled from environmental burden. In 2018, 0.40 Mt. of nitrogen, 0.28 Mt. of phosphorous, and 0.28 Mt. of potassium inorganic fertilizers were implied. Our findings indicate that the sector is not yet compliant with the EU sustainability targets defined in the Farm To Fork Strategy, calling for an urgent need to fill existing policy implementation gaps. The EU chicken meat industry's environmental footprints were driven by endogenous factors such as the feed use efficiency at the chicken farming stage and the feed cultivation efficiency within the EU, as well as by exogenous factors such as the import of feed via international trade. Limitations on the use of alternative feed sources, as well as the exclusion of the imports from the EU legal framework constitute a crucial gap, which hamper fully leveraging existing solutions.
欧盟的鸡肉生产在欧盟内部和外部都造成了环境压力，主要是由于饲料消耗。从红肉转向禽肉的预期饮食转变将推动鸡饲料需求的变化，并带来相关的环境影响，这就需要重新关注这条供应链。本文通过基于物质流核算的细分分析，评估了欧盟鸡肉行业从 2007 年到 2018 年期间消耗的每一种饲料在欧盟内部和外部造成的年度环境负担。在分析期内，为支持欧盟鸡肉行业的增长而增加的饲料需求导致耕地使用增加了 17%——2018 年为 670 万公顷。相比之下，同期与饲料需求相关的 CO2 排放量减少了约 45%。尽管资源和影响强度总体上有所改善，但鸡肉生产并未与环境负担脱钩。2018 年，隐含了 0.40 百万吨氮、0.28 百万吨磷和 0.28 百万吨钾无机肥料。我们的研究结果表明，该行业尚未符合欧盟《从农场到餐桌战略》中定义的可持续性目标，这迫切需要填补现有政策执行中的差距。欧盟鸡肉行业的环境足迹受到内部因素的驱动，如养鸡阶段的饲料利用效率和欧盟内部饲料种植效率，以及外部因素，如通过国际贸易进口饲料。替代饲料来源使用的限制，以及将进口饲料排除在欧盟法律框架之外，构成了一个关键的差距，这阻碍了充分利用现有解决方案。
