A critical review of the recent evolution of Life Cycle Assessment applied to milk production

This review highlighted the difficulties encountered in comparing milk LCA studies, underlining the importance of practitioners' choices in determining the results. Harmonization among LCA studies applied to the milk sector still represents a goal to be achieved. It appeared that future LCAs should investigate a broad range of impact categories, including biodiversity and water consumption; define one or more common functional units; improve transparency, giving a detailed description of system boundaries and reporting the method used for impact calculation; and systematically conduct a sensitivity analysis for a better understanding of the effects of the choices of method.