A new assessment of the climate impact of Swedish chicken
Swedish chicken has been marked with yellow light again in the Meat Guide from World Wildlife Fund, WWF. Chicken labelled with KRAV has a green light from before. A recent so-called life cycle assessment, transparency, and shared data have contributed to the new assessment in the WWF listing.
In autumn 2021, WWF tightened the Meat Guide criteria for climate and animal welfare based on research. This meant that Swedish chicken ended up on a red light, while KRAV-labelled chicken got a green light. After that, the Swedish Poultry Meat Association (Svensk Fågel) commissioned a new so-called life cycle assessment showing the climate impact of Swedish chicken production.
All stakeholders in the chicken value chain participated in providing data and information, including Scandi Standard’s Swedish subsidiary Kronfågel. The results from the new analysis showed that the climate impact of Swedish chicken is below the 3 kg CO2 / kg meat threshold, which means green light on climate and yellow light in the overall assessment.
— This is good news. We were surprised by the red listing and questioned it, considering that chicken as a product has 90 percent less climate impact compared to red meat, while we at Scandi Standard, our subsidiary Kronfågel, and the entire industry have done extensive work to reduce our climate impact, says Ida Ljungkvist, Sustainability Director at Scandi Standard.
With the new result for climate impact, WWF has recently updated the result for Swedish chicken in the Meat Guide. The new assessment is based on the life cycle assessment that was presented by the Research Institutes of Sweden, RISE, in the fall of 2022. Scandi Standard has also been able to provide WWF with data from the production stage of the chicken life cycle.
— We are very happy that the chicken industry has shared its data. Transparency is an important sustainability issue and with the new report, knowledge about chicken production has increased in several ways, says Anna Richert, food expert at WWF.
About Life cycle assessment (LCA)
Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a scientific method for calculating the environmental impact during a product’s entire life cycle. With an LCA, you can find out at which stage of a product’s life cycle a certain environmental impact is greatest.
