The environmental footprints of the feeds used by the EU chicken meat industry

• Published in: The Science of the total environment 2023-08, Vol.886, p.163960-163960, Article 163960
• Main Authors: Sporchia, Fabio, Galli, Alessandro, Kastner, Thomas, Pulselli, Federico M., Caro, Dario
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Animals; carbon dioxide; Chicken meat; Chickens; Commerce; cropland; environment; European Union; farm to fork; Farm to fork strategy targets; feed intake; Interlinkages and trade-offs; international trade; Internationality; issues and policy; livestock and meat industry; Material flow analysis; Meat - analysis; meat production; Multiple sustainability assessment; nitrogen; phosphorus; potassium; Supply chain sustainability
• ISSN: 0048-9697; 1879-1026
• DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.163960

Chicken meat production in the European Union (EU) causes environmental pressures within and beyond the EU, mostly due to feed consumption. The expected dietary shift from red to poultry meat will drive changes in the demand for chicken feeds and the associated environmental impacts, calling for a renewed attention on this supply chain. By performing a break-down analysis based on material flow accounting, this paper assesses the annual environmental burden caused within and outside of the EU by each single feed consumed by the EU chicken meat industry from 2007 to 2018. The increased feed demand required to support the growth of the EU chicken meat industry over the analyzed period caused a 17 % increase in cropland use - 6.7 million hectares in 2018. Instead, CO2 emissions linked to feed demand decreased by ~45 % over the same period. Despite an overall improvement in resource and impact intensity, chicken meat production was not decoupled from environmental burden. In 2018, 0.40 Mt. of nitrogen, 0.28 Mt. of phosphorous, and 0.28 Mt. of potassium inorganic fertilizers were implied. Our findings indicate that the sector is not yet compliant with the EU sustainability targets defined in the Farm To Fork Strategy, calling for an urgent need to fill existing policy implementation gaps. The EU chicken meat industry's environmental footprints were driven by endogenous factors such as the feed use efficiency at the chicken farming stage and the feed cultivation efficiency within the EU, as well as by exogenous factors such as the import of feed via international trade. Limitations on the use of alternative feed sources, as well as the exclusion of the imports from the EU legal framework constitute a crucial gap, which hamper fully leveraging existing solutions. [Display omitted] •We assess the environmental burden related to the EU chicken feed consumption.•EU chicken meat industry causes environmental burden in foreign countries.•The environmental footprint is not decoupled from production volumes.•Sustainable intensification and revised trade pathways are key drivers.•Future challenges require actions on multiple political ad technological aspects.