Data in Brief (Dec 2020)
Allocation factors for meat coproducts: Dataset to perform life cycle assessment at slaughterhouse
Abstract
The sharing of total environmental impacts between the different products of a multi-output system is crucial in Life Cycle Assessment. ISO standards recommend subdivision then substitution methods when possible. Sometimes, allocations rules are necessary. They consist of allocating the total impact to the different products in proportion to a value that characterize the products. They can be based on physical parameters (such as mass, protein, dry matter, etc.) or the economic value of coproducts can be used as a proxy. As they are based on various type of parameters, allocation rules can lead to significantly different environmental impact results. Then a consensus is difficult to reach between stakeholders as for example in meat sector. To make the debate going further, Chen et al. (2017) proposed a new allocation method based on biophysical parameters (Chen et al., 2017). Adapted from previous methods, they propose to allocate impacts in proportion to the energy needed for the growth, the maintenance and the activity of each tissue. The method has been judged as scientifically viable but also particularly difficult to apply due to the amount of necessary data and to the complexity of the calculation model. In a recent project, we developed a freeware to easily calculate biophysical allocation factors as well as mass and economic factors to allow a fair comparison: MeatPartTool. We also collected data to create a dataset of mass, economic and biophysical allocation factors for a large range of beef (132 individuals), calf (54 individuals) and lamb (14 individuals) at the slaughterhouse stage. This data paper provides both primary data and calculated allocation factors.
