Food and drink manufacturing: Establishing baseline contributions to climate change and identifying scope for reduction of environmental impacts

Challenges

Scotland’s food and drink manufacturing sector is an important contributor to the economy, accounting for 31% of the annual turnover of the manufacturing sector. Scotland’s reputation as a land of food and drink is largely driven by the production of high-quality healthy food.

The positive messaging of Scotland as a land of food and drink must be maintained while delivering its ambitious climate change targets. The Scottish Government commits to reducing baseline greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 75% by 2030 and transitioning to net zero by 2045. Meeting these targets requires a coordinated approach across all sectors of society including the manufacturing of food and drink.  

Food production generates GHG emissions and agriculture, and related land use, accounted for 24% of the total emissions in 2017, down 29% from the baseline levels of 1990(4). An update to the Scottish climate change plan has accelerated the drive to net zero and will require a transformation across all sectors of society including the food and drink manufacturing sector. This includes transforming the agricultural/food production system and building a greater understanding of the environmental impact of practices associated with the manufacture and distribution of food and drink products.

Questions

Solutions

The purpose of this project is to build a greater understanding of the environmental impact of practices associated with the manufacture and distribution of food and drink products. To do this, we will estimate and monitor baseline GHG emissions, energy usage, inputs as well as the generation of waste in crop and livestock-based manufacturing and processing supply chains. This will provide a benchmark and means to underpin future monitoring and help identify sectors where there is a scope for further reduction in environmental impacts either through the adoption of low-emission technologies, reduction of inputs, the prevention and valorisation of waste or a combination of all three.

Product quality data from dairy and beef production

The first part of this project is collating and collecting product quality data from dairy, beef, and beef cross-dairy production. Currently, beef system efficiency is driven by abattoirs closely specifying the carcass characteristics of supplied cattle. This leads to large sires (for example, Belgian Blue) being used to mate with small dairy cows (for example, Jersey cross Holsteins) to create a calf that meets that market requirement. This neither addresses product quality nor potential welfare image concerns. There may be better alternatives if consumers’ reactions to the meat-eating qualities of these alternatives are known and can be exploited in a specialised supply chain. We use exemplar data to generate carcases for testing and for analysis to determine relationships between meat-eating qualities and other animal and farm characteristics.

Estimating the impacts of processing pathways

The second part is estimating the impacts of processing pathways. GHG emissions can vary widely across different products and production methods in the global food and drink industry. Using existing baseline data for agricultural and seafood production output, we are developing modelled scenarios exploring four major processing pathways within Scotland. This is being done by combining industry data, and data from the literature to address the areas of crop and seafood processing.

Case Study: reduction in the environmental impact of malting

The third part takes advantage of our interactions with the malting industry to answer questions of GHG emissions and energy usage associated with the reuse of steep water and in particular what gains could be made using different barley lines to reduce the environmental footprint in terms of water and energy use.

Overall, the main audience for this project is the food and drink manufacturing sector and is providing them with further insights on benchmarking GHG emissions and energy use and a means to underpin future monitoring.