PUBLIC CONSULTATION – PROTOCOL FOR INCLUDING MITIGATION TECHNOLOGIES IN LIFECYLE ASSESSMENTS

Introduction to the MiLCA Protocol Consultation:
This consultation is kindly requesting you or colleagues in your organization’s expert review of this protocol that addresses a critical part of the GHG mitigation jigsaw.
Supply chains and consumers are demanding food products that are produced responsibly which in part includes lower carbon footprints.
Although there are established protocols for calculating the carbon footprint of dairy production, there remain two main gaps limiting the dairy sector’s ability to report the mitigation impact of technologies that have been proactively implemented.

1. A lack of robust scientific evidence ‘standards’ that ensure the efficacy and associated mitigation claims for existing and new technologies. i.e. what evidence is required before a mitigation ‘lever’ is scientifically considered to result in a specified claim in the reduction of the carbon footprint.
2. How the outcome of any technology employed can be confidently included and reflected in carbon footprint calculations.
   

The following organizations have come together to solve this challenge to ensure they can report reductions with confidence:

Arla Foods
Danone
Fonterra
Friesland Campina
Nestle
New Zealand Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Research Centre

This protocol sets out the criteria and approaches that, when applied to a GHG mitigation technology, will provide the necessary confidence for both the dairy organization claiming the mitigation and stakeholders that their products are safe to consume and the claimed GHG emissions reductions are robustly validated.
The protocol is science based and has been developed by an expert multi-disciplinary academic team that are experienced and influential in global carbon activities and carbon accounting. In addition, the protocol development has benefited from the involvement of scientists involved in the Global Research Alliance for Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Emissions (GRA).
The protocol development has tried to strike a balance between scientific robustness and practical application in the biological systems of dairy production.

The focus of this protocol is to effectively and robustly capture the impact the application of existing and new technologies have as they become available, such as for example enteric methane inhibitors. It is worth noting, this protocol is not designed to assess GHG emissions reductions associated with changes in dairy management practices that are normally captured through standard carbon footprinting calculations.

The Consultation:
The purpose of this consultation is to encourage review and feedback from a wide range of expertise and perspectives. This is ground-breaking work undertaken by the dairy sector and it is critical that stakeholders have confidence in what is ultimately published so that it achieves its aim of supporting the sector to report their emissions reductions consistently and responsibly.

The consultation is based on three key components:

1. The protocol and associated flow chart.
2. An interactive spreadsheet that allows reviewers to explore in more detail, the calculations contained in the DraU Protocol (9.2.1 & 9.2.2)
3. Supplementary materials – providing additional insight on how the protocol has been developed and calculations are undertaken.
4. Targeted questions for reviewers. These are located at the end of the Supplementary Materials. Feedback for these is to also be provided under each question which is also included in the dedicated feedback form.

All five documents can be downloaded from the links to the top right of this page.

The feedback will be collected (using the dedicated feedback template) with each response considered seriously. The Project Team will compile all feedback and document the ‘action taken’ for each piece of feedback.
The format of the documents that you have here is not the final form. The Collaborators want to get the fundamentals of the protocol completed firstly before considering design/layout activities.
Please do share this consultation opportunity with experts and interested stakeholders who have specific knowledge that could support the evolution of this protocol.

The project Collaborators and the Research Team are excited to receive your feedback by Wednesday March 27, 2024, to this critically important piece of work.

Many thanks in anticipation:
The Project Team.

Enquiries – e-mail: [email protected]