Material flow analysis and sustainability of the Italian meat industry

Highlights

• This analysis examines the Italian meat industry under a circular economy perspective.

• This work applies a monitoring tool for assessing agri-food systems.

• Two key elements: MFA approach; material cycle and eco-efficiency indicators.

• Food waste measurement through mass balance approach facilitates its valorization.

• Beef and pork industries increased their eco-efficiency by 28–30% from 2008 to 2018.

Abstract

The Italian meat industry represents a core business for the national economy, accounting for over 20 billion euro (15% of the domestic agri-food value), but requires large amounts of energy and produces several types of waste, of which food loss and waste account for an always-increasing amount. The United Nations 2030 Agenda has established food waste as a global concern, contributing to social, environmental and economic losses. Nevertheless, only a few studies have addressed food waste quantification from production to consumption stage. This paper, in line with Commission Delegated Decision (EU) 2019/1597 concerning a common methodology and minimum quality requirements for the uniform measurement of levels of food waste, applies the Material Flow Analysis (MFA) methodology to the Italian meat industry, testing its reliability in sustainability assessments. With MFA it was possible first to quantify and qualify food waste streams and secondly to calculate related material cycles and eco-efficiency indicators. Results demonstrate that, in 2018, the Italian meat industry processed more than 4.9 Mt to produce approximately 2.0 Mt of fresh meat, 1.9 Mt of co-products and by-products, 0.7–0.8 Mt of meat-based products and more than 0.2–0.3 Mt of food waste at retail and final consumption. Material Use Efficiency was estimated at 0.95–0.97 (96%) at slaughtering, drastically decreasing to 0.79–0.85 (82%) when “unconscious” food waste was included, showing that it represents a significant variable mass for material cycle indicator calculation. On the other side, a sharp increase in eco-efficiency indicators was assessed, showing an average variation of approximately +20% in the last ten years in terms of material input productivity.

Introduction

Food loss and waste minimization represents a social, economic and environmental challenge, and its importance has sharply increased in the last decade. In 2015, food loss and waste minimization became one of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) within the Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development. Among the SDGs, the United Nations aims to end hunger and increase food security and food safety through sustainable agriculture, food production and consumption, halving per-capita food waste at retail and final consumption and reducing food losses during the agricultural and processing stages (United Nations, 2015, United Nations, 2020, 2020). In the same year (2015), the European Commission adopted the “Closing the Loop—An EU Action Plan for the Circular Economy” to accelerate the achievement of SDGs (European Commission, 2015). The action plan was later implemented by the introduction of the monitoring framework for the circular economy (European Commission, 2018), where food waste is explicitly mentioned as one of the ten circular economy indicators (Moraga et al., 2019; Eurostat, 2020a).

In such a plan appears an explicit reference to the food waste issue, which amounts in the European Union (EU) to 85–88 million tons (Mt), including edible food and inedible parts associated with food equal to approximately 173–180 kg per capita per year (Beretta et al., 2013; FUSIONS, 2016a). On average, roughly 9 Mt occurs at the agricultural stage, 17 Mt during industrial processing, 4 Mt during distribution and more than 55 Mt at final consumption (FUSIONS, 2016a; 2016b; FAO et al., 2018; McCarthy et al., 2018). Its associated economic losses are estimated at more than 143 billion euro per year (ReFED, 2016). However, the related environmental impacts are estimated in more than 3 Gt of CO₂eq, equal to 24% of the whole environmental impact related to the entire food supply chain (13 Gt of CO₂eq) and 6% of global GHG emissions (Poore and Nemecek, 2018; Scherhaufer et al., 2018; Beretta and Hellweg, 2019; IPCC, 2019; Ritchie, 2020). According to the Italian agri-food system, food waste is estimated at more than 8.5 Mt per year (approximately 150 kg per capita), corresponding to more than 15 billion euro (European Commission, 2010; Notarfonso et al., 2015).

There is no univocal and common definition of food waste in the literature, which limits the undertaking of an efficient and real quantification and, therefore, of adapting targeted strategies for its prevention and reduction. Indeed, the term “food losses and waste,” along all stages of the food supply chain, is often used as one category, thus leading to overlapping between food losses and food waste (Spang et al., 2019; Lombardi and Costantino, 2020). To overcome those problems and supplement Directive 2008/98/EC on waste, the EU proposed five measurement methodologies in 2019 with the aim of ensuring uniform monitoring of material flows in the food supply chain in the context of a targeted food waste prevention policy (OJEU, 2019). Moreover, Commission Delegated Decision (UE) 2019/1597 stated that measurement should be done on a regular basis at least once every four years for each stage of the food supply chain.

In the last ten years (2010–2020), several studies have been published on the food waste issue, investigating its quality and quantity by applying one or more of these five methodologies. A plethora of authors returned to direct measurement (Silvennoinen et al., 2015; Boschini et al., 2018; Abdelaal et al., 2019; Elimelech et al., 2019; Poças Ribeiro et al., 2019), weighing food waste or assessing its volume, while others (Hartikainen et al., 2018; Sakaguchi et al., 2018; Garcia-Garcia et al., 2019) have appealed to interviews, surveys and food diaries (Katajajuuri et al., 2014; Giordano et al., 2018; Quested et al., 2020; Fiore et al., 2017), asking participants to self-account and estimate food waste. Only a few authors (Read et al., 2019; Thamagasom and Pharino, 2019) applied the mass balance approach based on an input–output analysis, of which even fewer have successfully utilized the Material Flow Analysis (MFA) methodology (Beretta et al., 2013; Caldeira et al., 2019; Amicarelli et al., 2020).

In the light of these premises, the aim of this paper is to apply the MFA methodology to the Italian meat industry, first to verify how such tool is suitable to pursue the Commission Delegated Decision (UE) 2019/1597 in terms of food waste measurement and secondly to complete its results utility calculating material cycles and eco-efficiency indicators. The novelty of this work is the combination of MFA results with such indicators, as only a few studies have followed this approach at a national level (Hashimoto and Moriguchi, 2004; Rattanapan et al., 2012; Wang et al., 2016). In addition, the analysis may aid industry management in terms of natural resources, co-products and by-products valorization, as well as to support industrial symbiosis models allowing a more rational relationship between different industrial sectors.

The authors have targeted the Italian meat industry because it represents more than the 15% of national agri-food value (ISMEA, 2019a, ISMEA, 2019b, ISMEA, 2019c, 2019b, 2019c). Furthermore, the Italian meat industry is subject to Regulation (EC) 1069/2009, a complex legislative framework that offers interesting points for the agri-food sector circularity enhancement analysis. Among its main aims, it states that food waste should be used properly and should guarantee public and animal health, the safety of the food and feed chain and even consumer confidence, considering at the same time the socioeconomic impact of food waste, their economic value and the environmental impacts related to their disposal (OJEU, 2009). Thus, the EU highlights the importance of food waste valorization, stressing the role of veterinary control along the whole meat food supply chain, from breeding to by-product transformation, considering food waste disposal as a “not realistic option” (extrema ratio) for its related unsustainable environmental costs and risks (OJEU, 2009).

The industrial plants distributed in Italy could be categorized into slaughterhouses, cutting plants and cold stores. Available data (ISMEA, 2019a, ISMEA, 2019b, ISMEA, 2019c, 2019b, 2019c; Istat, 2019) have stated that more than 120,000 breeding farms and approximately 1700 slaughterhouses are located in Italy, of which more than 1500 are for beef production and roughly 200 are for pork production. In terms of poultry breeding, the Italian scenario is fragmented and characterized by the adjustment contract, which makes the individuation of an exact number of companies difficult.

Among all Italian plants, it is important to recognize the plants that follow the EU’s hygiene package (OJEU, 2004) and market their products all over Europe. There are less than 400 such plants (approximately 20% of Italian plants), and all are listed and updated daily at the Ministry of Health, Directorate-General for Public Veterinary Health, Food and Nutrition (Rama, 2014). The remaining quota (80%) is represented by plants with limited capacity operating only in the national territory. According to the legislative framework (OJEU, 2009), slaughterhouses should respect the categorization of animal by-products, distinguishing between high-risk (so-called category I), medium-risk (category II) and no-risk (category III) by-products and considering every opportunity of re-use, valorization and energy-recovery with only a few limitations. (a) Animals cannot be fed with feeding obtained from by-products of the same species (cannibalism). (b) Animals intended for human consumption cannot be fed with food services waste or with feeding obtained from food services waste.

In terms of by-product valorization, two main typologies of slaughterhouses should be noted in Italy: integrated and independent ones. Generally, the first one is integrated with by-product valorization plants and treat fresh and not deteriorated materials with easer control, and only a few adjustments are necessary before valorization processes. The other typology is composed by bigger and independent slaughterhouses able to transform a larger variety of by-products, requiring a wider number of operations before by-products valorization (Isprambiente, 2005; Ercoli and Bonari, 2008). Such plants, which represent the majority of Italian plants, could adopt several typologies of processes: (a) wet or dry melting; (b) blood drying; (c) feather and skin transformation; (d) oil and fat recovery; (e) incineration plants; and (f) composting and bio-energy production (alternatives to rendering).