CREA Research Centre for Engineering and Agro-Food Processing, Consiglio per la Ricerca in Agricoltura e l'Analisi dell'Economia Agraria, Via Milano 43, 24047 Treviglio, BG, Italy.
Department of Veterinary Medical Sciences (DIMVET), University of Bologna, Via Tolara di Sopra 50, 40064 Ozzano Emilia, BO, Italy.
Animal. 2024 Feb;18(2):101057. doi: 10.1016/j.animal.2023.101057. Epub 2023 Dec 15.
In the last decades, western Countries increased their interest in innovative products like donkey milk and other activities carried out with donkeys (onotherapy, onotourism). Donkey milk is considered a high-added-value food and is very similar to human breast milk. It is also used as an ingredient in cosmetics. The growing public interest suggests the need for a pilot study on the sustainability of donkey milk production, according to Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) criteria. Milk was used as the Declared Functional Unit (DFU) and two different models were described, a Real Scenario Model (RSM, i.e. a farm with its declared milk yield), and an Increased Milk Production Model (IMPM, i.e., the same farm with theoretically increased milk yield). Allocation was applied both in RSM and IMPM; thus, different values of impact categories, i.e., Global Warming Potential (GWP, kg CO equivalents), Acidification Potential (ACP, g SO equivalents) and Eutrophication Potential (EUP, g PO) were observed. GWP improved after mass allocation and showed the lowest equivalents in IMPM, compared to economic and reference allocation criterion (P < 0.05). In RSM, allocations affected GWP in a different way: the smaller size of the DFU resulted in the largest estimation of CO equivalents (P < 0.05) for reference allocation, whereas the mass allocation estimates were lower than with economic allocation (P < 0.05). ACP and EUP followed the same trends. No differences were found in IMPM results across the three allocation methods used. Moreover, mass allocation values recorded in RSM did not significantly differ from IMPM. ACP and EUP of RSM improved after economic allocation, although they were less sustainable (P < 0.05) than all IMPM values and RSM equivalents after mass allocation (P < 0.05). As expected, the theoretical model with increased milk yield improved the sustainability of the system. Both scenarios were affected by allocation criteria. In RSM, the economic and mass allocations described a representative scenario where donkey meat contributed to subtracting equivalents from milk (the main product). The present paper is a pilot study estimating for the first time the environmental impact of donkey milk production, with the aim to stimulate further research.
在过去的几十年里，西方国家对驴奶等创新产品及其相关活动（驴疗、驴游）产生了浓厚的兴趣。驴奶被认为是一种高附加值的食品，与人类母乳非常相似。它也被用作化妆品的成分。鉴于生活周期评估（LCA）标准，公众日益增长的兴趣表明需要对驴奶生产的可持续性进行试点研究。牛奶被用作申报的功能单位（DFU），并描述了两种不同的模型，即真实情景模型（RSM，即具有申报牛奶产量的农场）和牛奶产量增加模型（IMPM，即具有理论上增加的牛奶产量的同一农场）。在 RSM 和 IMPM 中都应用了分配；因此，观察到不同影响类别（即全球变暖潜能值（GWP，kg CO 当量）、酸化潜能值（ACP，g SO 当量）和富营养化潜能值（EUP，g PO）的不同值。与经济和参考分配标准相比（P < 0.05），大规模分配后，GWP 得到改善，并且在 IMPM 中观察到最低的当量。在 RSM 中，分配以不同的方式影响 GWP：DFU 的规模较小导致参考分配的 CO 当量的最大估计（P < 0.05），而大规模分配的估计值低于经济分配（P < 0.05）。ACP 和 EUP 遵循相同的趋势。在所使用的三种分配方法中，在 IMPM 结果中未发现差异。此外，在 RSM 中记录的大规模分配值与 IMPM 没有显着差异。经济分配后，RSM 的 ACP 和 EUP 得到改善，尽管它们不如所有 IMPM 值和大规模分配后 RSM 的当量可持续（P < 0.05）。正如预期的那样，具有增加牛奶产量的理论模型提高了系统的可持续性。两个方案都受到分配标准的影响。在 RSM 中，经济和大规模分配描述了一个代表情景，其中驴肉有助于从牛奶（主要产品）中减去当量。本文是首次估计驴奶生产的环境影响的试点研究，旨在激发进一步的研究。
