Social life cycle assessment of Swedish organic and conventional pork production

Abstract

PurposeSustainable animal food systems are increasingly important to society. Yet for pork, the most consumed meat product in Europe, there is no social life cycle assessment (S-LCA) in the literature. The breath and complexity of social issues and lack of data makes the task challenging. This study examines the risk of negative social impacts in Swedish pork production systems and includes workers, farmers, consumers, local community, society, and pigs as stakeholders.MethodsThe objective was to assess the risk of negative social impacts for the production and consumption of 1000-kg pork (fork weight—bone free meat including cooking losses) originating from two different systems: organic and conventional pork production. Relevant social sustainability issues for pork production systems were identified through a literature search and a consultative workshop with experts. A life cycle inventory was conducted to collect data for activity variables and compute Social Risk (SR), a measure of the risk of negative social impacts related to a reference (here the average European social conditions). Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP) was used to obtain weights for subcategories. The SR scores and the weights were used to calculate Social Risk Time (SRT) that relates the Social Risk to the functional unit by considering the ‘exposure’ to the risk, and the Social Hotspot Index (SHI), which relates the SRT to the worst possible situation for that system.Results and discussionThe conventional pork system had 42% of inventory indicators with SR > 0.5 and the organic pork system had 32%. For all stakeholders, the pig farm had the largest SRT in both production systems except for workers in the organic pork system where the soybean farm had the largest SRT. In the conventional pork system, society as well as farmers at the pig farm had SHI > 0.5 slightly, meaning performing the same as European average. In the organic pork system, SHI < 0.5 for all stakeholders and subsystems.ConclusionSwedish pork production has lower risk of negative social impacts than the average European social conditions for most of the stakeholders: workers, pigs, local community, and consumers. Farmers and society at the subsystem pig farm have the same risk of negative social impacts as the average European social conditions. Due to the dependence of the results of the chosen reference level, the reliance on certification, and the indicators included, results should be interpreted and used with care.