Framework for integrating animal welfare into life cycle sustainability assessment

PURPOSE: This study seeks to provide a framework for integrating animal welfare as a fourth pillar into a life cycle sustainability assessment and presents three alternative animal welfare indicators. METHODS: Animal welfare is assessed during farm life and during slaughter. The indicators differ in how they value premature death. All three consider (1) the life quality of an animal such as space allowance, (2) the slaughter age either as life duration or life fraction, and (3) the number of animals affected for providing a product unit, e.g. 1 Mcal. One of the indicators additionally takes into account a moral value denoting their intelligence and self-awareness. The framework allows for comparisons across studies and products and for applications at large spatial scales. To illustrate the framework, eight products were analysed and compared: beef, pork, poultry, milk, eggs, salmon, shrimps, and, as a novel protein source, insects. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION: Insects are granted to live longer fractions of their normal life spans, and their life quality is less compromised due to a lower assumed sentience. Still, they perform worst according to all three indicators, as their small body sizes only yield low product quantities. Therefore, we discourage from eating insects. In contrast, milk is the product that reduces animal welfare the least according to two of the three indicators and it performs relatively better than other animal products in most categories. The difference in animal welfare is mostly larger for different animal products than for different production systems of the same product. This implies that, besides less consumption of animal-based products, a shift to other animal products can significantly improve animal welfare. CONCLUSIONS: While the animal welfare assessment is simplified, it allows for a direct integration into life cycle sustainability assessment. There is a trade-off between applicability and indicator complexity, but even a simple estimate of animal welfare is much better than ignoring the issue, as is the common practice in life cycle sustainability assessments. Future research should be directed towards elaborating the life quality criterion and extending the product coverage. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1007/s11367-017-1420-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.