Environmental Performance of the Poultry Meat Chain – LCA Approach

This review aims to give an overview of published environmental assessments using the life cycle assessment (LCA) approach. LCA was deployed in terms of five main subsystems in the poultry meat chain: poultry farm, slaughterhouse, meat processing plant, retail and household use. This review revealed that 15 different environmental potentials are used as environmental indicators for estimating environmental performance of the poultry meat chain. General finding is that further research should use the LCA approach to assess the environmental performance of an overall poultry meat chain, focusing on the global warming potential, acidification potential, eutrophication potential and ozone layer depletion.