Environmental Assessment Of An Egg Production
This report, commissioned by Australian Egg Corporation Limited, examines the environmental impact of egg production in Australia. The study measures water use, energy use, and contributions to global warming. Compared to European countries, this report finds Australia generates lower greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and that emissions are lower for caged hens than free range hens.
From Executive Summary:
“The Australian egg industry is characterised by intensive, modern, highly efficient production systems and a growing free range production sector, which together produce some 345 million dozen eggs annually. The industry aims to have a high degree of environmental performance through adoption of best management practices for a range of environmental issues although, to-date, there have been no comprehensive analyses of environmental performance across the whole egg supply chain. In order to quantify the most important environmental and resource impacts faced by the industry, a life cycle assessment (LCA) study was commissioned to investigate emissions of greenhouse gases, energy and water use. This study investigated both caged and free range egg production through to the end of the primary production supply chain, using a functional unit of one kilogram of eggs produced.”
“Australian egg production was found to generate low levels of greenhouse gas (GHG) when compared with egg production from European studies. Total GHG was 1.3 +/- 0.2 kg CO2-e / kg eggs from caged production and 1.6 +/- 0.3 kg CO2-e / kg for free range production.
Despite the overlapping confidence intervals, free range production generated higher emissions than caged production when shared variability was taken into account. ”
“Cumulative energy demand (CED) for caged production (0.7 +/- 0.9 MJ / kg eggs) was lower than studies previously reported in the literature. Cumulative energy demand for free range egg production (13.1 +/- 1.1 MJ / kg eggs) was slightly higher than for caged production, but was similar to other studies reported in the literature. The higher impacts for GHG and CED associated with free range production were attributable to higher feed conversion ratio (FCR) and lower productivity compared to caged production.”
The link below will begin a download of a PDF file of the full report.