In an era where sustainability is becoming a paramount concern, the intersection of animal welfare and environmental impact is gaining significant attention. This article delves into the integration of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)—a widely recognized model for evaluating the environmental impacts of products—with considerations for animal welfare, particularly within the agriculture industry. Authored by Skyler Hodell and based on a comprehensive review by Lanzoni et al. (2023), the article explores how LCA can be enhanced to better account for the welfare of farmed animals, thereby providing a more holistic approach to sustainability.
The review underscores the importance of combining LCA with on-farm welfare assessments to create a more comprehensive evaluation model. Despite LCA’s status as a “gold standard” for assessing environmental impacts, it has been criticized for its product-based approach, which often prioritizes short-term productivity over long-term sustainability. By examining over 1,400 studies, the authors identified a significant gap: only 24 studies effectively combined animal welfare with LCA, highlighting the need for more integrated research.
These selected studies were categorized based on five key animal welfare indicators: nutrition, environment, health, behavioral interactions, and mental state. The findings reveal that existing animal welfare protocols predominantly focus on negative situations, failing to account for positive welfare conditions. This narrow focus suggests a missed opportunity to enhance sustainability models by incorporating a more nuanced understanding of animal welfare.
The article advocates for a dual assessment of environmental impact and animal welfare to better evaluate on-farm sustainability. By doing so, it aims to foster a more balanced approach that not only meets productivity demands but also ensures the well-being of farmed animals, ultimately contributing to more sustainable agricultural practices.
Summary By: Skyler Hodell | Original Study By: Lanzoni, L., Whatford, L., Atzori, A. S., Chincarini, M., Giammarco, M., Fusaro, I., & Vignola, G. (2023) | Published: July 30, 2024
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a model for evaluating the environmental impacts of a given product. Considerations for animal welfare may be combined with LCAs to make them even more useful.
Within the agriculture industry, definitions of animal welfare generally include models of on-farm sustainability. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a model that shows promise in assigning quantified value to environmental impacts of products across markets, including those of farmed animals. The present review focuses on whether previous LCA evaluations prioritized data measurement in tune with on-farm welfare assessments.
The review’s authors identify LCA as among the best tools available to evaluate potential environmental impacts, noting its widespread international adoption as a “gold standard” model applied across industries. Despite this, LCA has its limits. Common criticisms tend to hinge on LCA’s perceived “product-based” approach; there is sentiment that LCA places weight on assessing demand-side solutions, at the cost of longer-term sustainability. LCA tends to favor more intensive practices that yield higher productivity, without taking into consideration the long-term environmental impacts.
As the review’s authors make clear, animals used for food can be thought of as a measure of the farming industry’s sustainability efforts. In surveying available studies, the authors seek to judge if LCA’s lack of comprehensiveness provides an opportunity to help broaden the reach of sustainability models.
The authors examined over 1,400 studies, of which only 24 met the inclusion criteria of combining animal welfare evaluation with LCA and were included in the final paper. These studies were assorted into five groups, each based on animal welfare indicators previous studies had used to assess on-farm welfare. These domains comprised the nutrition, environment, health, behavioral interactions, and mental state of farmed animals. The authors note that nearly all existing animal welfare protocols focus just on “poor welfare,” quantifying only negative situations. They expand on this by emphasizing that a lack of perceived negative situations does not equate to positive welfare.
The review showed that indicators used in each study were variable. For example, studies’ assessments of nutrition were likely to consider the proportion of the number of individual animals to on-site drinkers/feeders, along with their cleanliness. As for “mental state,” studies allowed for extracted samples from animals to aid in determining stress hormone concentration. A plurality of studies used multiple welfare indicators; a smaller minority used only one. The authors suggest it would be preferable to assess both environmental impact and the welfare of animals together, rather than separately, when evaluating on-farm sustainability.
The review also explored a range of welfare assessments included in prior studies, each assessing on-farm welfare across cows, pigs, and chickens. Some studies reported welfare data in aggregate. In others, these data were quantified in a score based on LCA’s conventional functional unit of measurement. Other studies used more qualitative evaluations, such as scores based on scales or symbolic ratings.
The most frequently assessed indicator in studies comprised farmed animals’ environmental condition; the most neglected was mental state. The review likewise found that few studies analyzed all of the indicator criteria together. The authors argue that the use of international standard rules could yield more distributed and robust data — in line with the need to understand the finer nuances of the agricultural system. Taken together, there appeared to be little consistency in integrating welfare methods within the studies.
Among animal welfare researchers and advocates — as well as figures within agriculture — there seems to be consensus that a “universal” definition for animal welfare is absent. Overall, the literature makes clear that LCA’s efficacy as a model for assessing environmental impacts is not so conclusively affirmed. The authors ultimately draw contrasts between considerations of animal welfare and its application in improving sustainability projects.
LCA remains recognized as a leading method for assessing environmental impacts in production. Improvement of its comprehensiveness nonetheless remains a goal pending continued research as well as industry-wide application. Further study is likely needed to better understand LCA’s compatibility with broader definitions of sustainability — including those within the domain of animal welfare.
Notice: This content was initially published on Faunalytics.org and may not necessarily reflect the views of the Humane Foundation.
