Comparative life cycle assessment of beef, pork and ostrich meat: a critical point of view

Food production and consumption have an impact on the environment. As the environmental awareness of consumers rises, the demand of environmental friendly food products grows too. In this paper, a comparative study of the environmental performance of beef, pork and ostrich meat is carried out using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology. Bearing in mind the lack of experience in how to solve the problems that arise when this methodology is applied to the environmental evaluation of the food chains, the results have been submitted for a critical analysis. The results of the analysis display the importance of having valid databases, mainly related to agricultural processes. On the other hand, it shows the necessity of new methodologies to evaluate land use.