Attributing Farm-to-Slaughter Emissions to Hides: Evidence from Beef Supply Chains

Le résumé fourni par la source

Climate change is driven by anthropogenic greenhouse gases (GHGs). In the cattle supply chain, correctly allocating emissions to meat, milk and hides is crucial for life-cycle assessment (LCA). This paper reviews LCA boundaries and allocation criteria, discusses new global warming potential metrics (GWP*) and presents original Italian data on raw hides. Both literature and audit practice agree that hides should be assigned an upstream burden as co-products. Under economic allocation, the upstream environmental impact of raw hides is significantly lower than under mass allocation. Neglecting co-products at slaughter leads to an overestimation of the climate burden of meat and an underestimation of leather’s share. This study tested three specific hypotheses: that raw hides carry a non-zero upstream burden as marketable co-products (H1); that economic allocation assigns them a lower share of emissions than physical allocation (H2); and that price dynamics influence economic allocation shares over time (H3). Results from large-scale Italian data confirmed all three hypotheses. Although GWP* more accurately reflects methane dynamics, it could not be implemented due to a lack of detailed temporal data; therefore, GWP100 values were used to ensure consistency with the available inventories and current LCA standards. Overall, economic allocation appears to be the most appropriate method for hide accounting in beef production chains, as it is consistent with market valuation and circular economy principles.

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