
Published on Jan. 20, 2025
Eco-Efficient Pork: The Role of Genetics in Cutting Carbon Emissions
Reducing our global carbon emission is crucial for a number of reasons including climate change mitigation, sea level rise prevention, and air quality improvement. Addressing these concerns is a global responsibility to protect future generations. To do our part, we have now completed a report using Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) methodology to quantify the real impact of genetic improvement of Hypor pigs.
It is well known that animal protein production is a significant contributor to carbon emissions and in the past, efficiency of livestock systems was mainly driven by economic incentive. We are now committed to sustainable swine breeding that considers total impact including economics, ethics, and environmental impact. Choices we make in animal genetics today impact the future and are multiplied in the thousands or even millions of animals.
Where can genetics make an impact ?
Studies have demonstrated that genetic improvement leads to a visible reduction of the ecological footprint of the animal protein value chain. Feed is the main contributor to the ecological footprint of animal protein, and we sought out to answer the question: how do improved FCR rates contribute to lower CO2 emissions and reduced land usage by the commercial customers of our products?
How can we quantify this?
In 2022, we launched a project to analyze and quantify the impact of genetic improvement of our products for both Europe and North America. We used the Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) methodology to assess the environmental impacts of improved genetics. Information from the Global Feed LCA Institute (GFLI) was used to quantify how different feed ingredients contribute to CO2 emissions, land use and water consumption in Europe and North America. Let us have a closer look at the impact of our swine genetics in Europe. In the last 7 years, the average improvement in FCR has been 1.2% per year which translates into a reduction of 12.2% after 10 years.
In Europe, this improvement corresponds with reduction of 309 g of CO2 and 0.7 m2 of land to produce 1 kg of pork. We have quantified the impact not only for 1 kg of product but also for the entire pork production resulting from our genetic products. This was calculated by using the current market volume and our current market share. Due to our genetic improvement in FCR, the CO2 emissions in Europe related to pork production will be reduced by little more than one million tons. To put this in context, these emissions are similar to the number of emissions produced from about 15,000 one-way flights between New York and London. A commercial Boeing 747 uses about 70 ton CO2 to fly from London to New York, therefore the total reduced emissions are equal to about 15,000 of these flights. The land used (assuming no change in plant productivity) amounts to 231,000 ha. This is slightly larger than the size of New York City, which is about 789 square kilometers (304 square miles).
1kg of meat | Total | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Savings | g CO2 eq | Land (m2) | ton CO2 eq | Land (ha) | |
Europe | 12.2% | -309 | -.07 | -1,088,629 | -213,116 |
North America | 13.1% | -239 | -.05 | -672,180 | -146,985 |
Sustainable swine breeding is about a balanced breeding approach that considers the needs of animals, people, and planet. Through continuous improvement, we aim to reduce the impact production has on the environment, but now we can look at the data to understand and support these goals. Sustainability is more than just a buzz word, it must be quantified thanks to increased awareness and expectations from internal and external stakeholders. The swine industry is no exception to this increased pressure to reduce our carbon footprint, and genetics yields greater cumulative improvements in animal performance than any other activity within the entire production chain.
This study is only the first step as we have only considered the impact of improved feed conversion ratio. Expanding the analysis to other traits is now relatively straight forward as we have established the framework. The results of this analysis reveal the total impact of our activities, and we can now use these findings to continue setting sustainable breeding goals.