Environmental Impact of the European Food Basket using LCA.

The work described encompasses an evaluation, in terms of environmental impact, of food consumption in the EU. A quantitative and qualitative analysis of the structure of the EU food consumption was carried out to select a basket of products representative for the structure of 2010 EU-27 food consumption. An LCA of the basket was performed to evaluate the environmental impact of such consumption. The results indicate that in the majority of the environmental impact categories the most burdening foods are meat and dairy. Fruit contributes the least to the overall result because its relatively low impact is coupled with light packaging and lack of home processing or cooking. The agricultural phase is the most burdensome for most impact categories. The end-of- life phase and the losses occuring in all lifecycle phases need to be carefully considered since they can significantly contribute to the overall burden of food consumption.