The article entitled Life cycle sustainability assessment of a novel slaughter concept is now published online in the Journal of Cleaner Production. It presents a Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment study of an innovative slaughter concept, i.e., the Meat Factory Cell, a semi-automated system with human-robot interaction, as compared to a Conventional Slaughter and Cutting Process.
A case study is built which considers the conditions at a Norwegian slaughter facility. Several assumptions are made for the Meat Factory Cell as the concept is still at the developmental phase, and a sensitivity analysis has been employed for highlighting the hotspots in the Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment study. The results show that there is a trade-off between the three dimensions of the life cycle assessment. The Meat Factory Cell concept imposes no drastic changes to the environmental performance compared to the conventional process, while the economic and social LCA results indicate that there is variability among the considered impact categories. For the Life Cycle Costing, the innovative concept makes more sense from a cost perspective for small and medium-size abattoirs than for very large slaughterhouses. The social LCA indicates that a more efficient abattoir system, using the MFC might lead to loss of low qualified jobs but creates opportunities for more qualified personnel. This article has been written by Norsus in collaboration with Animalia (the Norwegian Meat and Poultry Research Centre) and using input data from the industry Nortura.
The authors are: Valente, C., Møller, H., Johnsen, F. M., Saxegård, S., (from Norsus) and Brunsdon, E. R., & Alvseike, O. A. (Animalia).
