Study on the suitability of life cycle assessment for the estimation of donkey milk environmental impact

• Published in: Animal (Cambridge, England) England), 2024-02, Vol.18 (2), p.101057-101057, Article 101057
• Main Authors: Bragaglio, Andrea, Romano, Elio, Cutini, Maurizio, Nannoni, Eleonora, Mota-Rojas, Daniel, Claps, Salvatore, De Palo, Pasquale
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Allocation; By-products; Equids; Food; Sustainability
• ISSN: 1751-7311; 1751-732X
• DOI: 10.1016/j.animal.2023.101057

•The growing interest in donkey milk as a novel food led our study.•We assessed the sustainability of donkey milk, a high-added-value food.•A few farms produce significant amounts of donkey milk, together with by-products.•Allocation to by-products decreases the impacts of donkey milk.•Our results are a milestone, helpful to investigate similar farms. 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 CO2 equivalents), Acidification Potential (ACP, g SO2 equivalents) and Eutrophication Potential (EUP, g PO43−) were observed. GWP improved after mass allocation and showed the lowest equivalents in IMPM, compared to economic and reference allocation criterion (P