A review of methodological issues affecting LCA of novel food products

Life cycle assessment (LCA) was initially developed to answer questions about the environmental impact of available products and services, implying that the product system under study was possible to investigate in detail; however, if new products or processes are to be evaluated, several complications occur. So, this paper aims to review the methodological issues that need careful attention when LCA is used for evaluating novel products, processes, or production from an environmental standpoint, as well as to draw some recommendations related to the best approach when dealing with them. An initial brainstorming on the identification of methodological issues when applying the standard LCA methodology for the evaluation of novel products allowed the identification of the relevant aspects, on which a literature review was then performed. Periodical meetings took place for discussion of the significant references and an agreed approach validated through three case studies on the food sector was defined as result of the procedure. Five elements were identified as relevant for the specific application of LCA to novel products: type of LCA, functional unit, system boundaries, data gathering, and scenarios development. An analysis of the state of the art of the LCA methodology concerning each of them led to the definition of the recommended approach: Type of LCA: prospective attributional LCA. Functional unit (FU): physical FU or the inclusion of the economic dimension in the FU. Scenarios development: future perspective of scenarios is required, although the particular method for scenarios development will depend on the aim of the study. System boundaries: system expansion when possible and exclusion of those steps that are not affected. Data gathering: specific data for the foreground system, while average data-but checking the suitability of using actual data-for the background system. The recommended approach was described through three case studies related to food products and processing. All were comparative studies, with the common element of including novel products (such as the production of new products from by-products) or novel processes (such as membrane technology or high pressure processing). This paper has, in our opinion, helped in cleaning the area of the application of LCA to novel systems in particular related to food products and food processing which is an area of great development in the last years. The working procedure defined and applied here has worked fluently allowing the identification of the key methodological elements of an LCA and the associated state of the art, together with the validation through different case studies. The general application of our approach is difficult to assess; however, we feel confident regarding the recommendations proposed here and we hope they can be of use for other LCA users. We recommend using the approach defined here in order to check its applicability to other industrial sectors. By doing so, both us and other LCA users will benefit from the methodological improvements of this environmental management tool.