Proceedings

Life Cycle Assessment

in the Agri-Food Sector

October 1-4

2012

Saint-Malo

France

colloque.inra.fr/lcafood2012

8th International Conference on

GROUP 5, SESSION B: FOOD PRODUCTS 8th Int. Conference on LCA in the

Agri-Food Sector, 1-4 Oct 2012

860

138. The development of robust Life Cycle Analysis for mycoprotein

and the meat free brand QuornTM

Wayne Martindale

1,*, Louise Neville

2, Muyiwa Akintoye

2, Tim Finnigan

2

1 Centre for Food Innovation, Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, S1 1WB UK,

2 Quorn Foods Ltd,

Stokesley, UK, * Corresponding author. E-mail: w.martindale@shu.ac.uk

The global food supply system is experiencing increased protein demand pressures that are dependent on

feed and livestock production systems that have received much attention in LCA research (FAO, 2006). Several internationally led assessments of wider impacts of livestock production raise the importance of Indi-

rect Land Use Change (ILUC) associated with production and trade in livestock products. An area that has

received less attention and one where we believe we are ready to report robust LCA data is that of industri-

ally produced proteins (Finnigan et al., 2010 and Toumisto 2010). We believe that industrially produced proteins offer significant benefits to the current world protein supply system that are currently unrealised by

meat producers, food manufacturers and policy makers.

To define the potential of meat free ingredients we have developed a LCA based approach to defining the production impact of the mycoprotein ingredient for the Quorn

TM brand of food products that is retailed in 22

countries. Mycoprotein is produced industrially from the fungal fermentation of wheat derived glucose in

the United Kingdom. An LCA programme within the mycoprotein and QuornTM

manufacturing facilities provided GWP measurements of 3.1 for mycoprotein and typically 4.2 for Quorn

TM products (see Table 1).

This initial LCA provided important targets for future investigation within the QuornTM

supply chain. These

were (1) energy balance and the use of co-product steam in QuornTM

manufacture from nearby ammonia

fixation plant, and, (2) the use of Egg White Protein (EWP) in the manufacture of QuornTM

from mycopro-tein. A further outcome, was a more detailed investigation of the Quorn

TM ingredient supply chain in the

terms of embodied GHG’s and energy.

Development and improvement of the existing LCA has identified GWP reductions of at least 30% over a three year period committing to the company to significant investment in LCA based on the very clear busi-

ness case that implementing LCA procedures improves production efficiencies and identifies cost reduction.

Furthermore, Quorn Foods Ltd has aligned current methodologies with the Carbon Trust Footprint Expert

LCA Model. This approach has further detailed knowledge of the mycoprotein and QuornTM

supply chain in terms of embodied resources and environmental impact associated with the product. It has further identified

the reality of fixing LCA boundaries around a brand that has over 90 discrete Stock Keeping Units (SKU’s).

We show that aligning commercial and marketing information with a international standard such as PAS2050 is still in a developmental stage. There is a requirement to develop applied statistical methods so

that companies can obtain typical data for supply chains that are not just ‘snapshots’ but represent integrative

data of supply chains over realistic commercial time periods accounting for production, waste and proportion of product consumed by consumers. This is critical to food supply chains and others where there are sea-

sonal changes in the LCA of ingredients and selective consumption of specific parts of products. We present

research that defines our approach in developing the functional unit of initial LCA of 1 tonne of mycoprotein

to a 300g of retail product purchased. In achieving this we have identified important considerations for the global protein production system where industrially produced proteins have a critical role to play in optimis-

ing land use.

References

FAO, 2006. Livestock’s Long Shadow. ISBN 9789251055717

Finnigan T., Lemon T., Allan B., and Paton I., 2010. Mycoprotein, Life Cycle Analysis and the Food 2030 challenge. Aspects of Applied Biology 102, 81-90.

Tuomisto H., (2010). Food security and protein supply- cultured meat a solution? Aspects of Applied Biol-

ogy 102, 99-104.

Table 1. The protein and eco-system service attributes of mycoprotein compared to wheat and beef

Protein

source

Protein

g/100g

GWP Land

use

Wheat 12.7 0.80 0.53 Beef 22.5 15.80 3.44

Mycoprotein 11.0 3.11 0.53