Carbon footprint of New Zealand beef and sheep meat exported to different markets

Abstract

New Zealand (NZ) is the world's largest exporter of sheep meat and an important exporter of beef. Given the current concern about the impact of food production on climate change, it is important to understand the extent of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for NZ exported products. This Life Cycle Assessment study calculated the cradle-to-grave carbon footprint of beef and sheep meat produced in NZ and exported to different markets. Sensitivity analyses were performed to evaluate the effect of different Global Warming Potential (GWP) metrics, carbon sequestration by trees on farms and different allocation methods at the processing stage. The carbon footprint for the cradle-to-farm gate represented 90–95% of the cradle-to-grave for both beef and sheep. At the farm gate (not accounting for the sensitivity analysis studied), the beef results were influenced by the contribution of dairy beef, which showed a 34% lower footprint than traditional beef (8.97 and 6.88 kg CO2e kg−1 LW, respectively). Sheep meat had lower emissions than beef for the on-farm stage (6.01 kg CO2e kg−1 LW). For GWP*, the estimated footprint values were much lower, especially for sheep, where the national flock decreased over the last 20 years. National data on net carbon sequestration by trees within farms was significant and equated to 29% of the total on-farm GHG emissions. The meat processing stage contributed 2–4% of the carbon footprint, while post-processing was 2–6%. Despite the long shipping distances involved, NZ beef and sheep meat supplied to international markets have a full life-cycle carbon footprint at the lower end of other published estimates.