Environmental sustainability, social and territorial processed food. – ACYDU

The consideration of issues related to sustainable development for French agro-food industries will induce them into challenges, as including food into an integrated life cycle from “cradle to grave”.
Nowadays, the environmental life cycle analysis is framed by an international standardized methodology designed mainly for agricultural products. In proceeds food many firms has implemented methodologies to assess the environmental impacts of their products but there is still a lack of scientific validation of these methodologies. There is a need to provide an harmonized tool that could be used in different agro-food sectors.
Morever, regarding to the consideration of social responsibility in its human, social, economical and territorial points of view, new methodologies need to be developed by research teams.
The aim of the ACYDU project is to develop environmental, economic, social and territorial methodologies for analyzing life cycle conditions and to test them in three typically French agro-food industries: wine, Comté cheese and foie gras.
This project, which type is "industrial and fundamental research" will be realized via an interdisciplinary collaborative work between:
- Specialists from food chains studied (centers and technical institutes of food-processing industry, joint-trade organizations and unions)
- Researchers in environmental impact assessment, economics, sociology
- Specialists in consumer approach
- Actors of distribution network and French food-processing industries representatives
In addition, the ACYDU Project aim to identify different food sustainability attributes for the consumer, to test different sustainability information display and to propose recomandations for agro-food and actors and public institutions.
Thus, we propose in ACYDU to participate in building knowledge in conceptual and empirical life cycle analysis methodology for food application on food, dealing with environmental social and territorial impacts added to an economical analysis, applied to three agro-food industries chosen in order to find where key locks and critical points are. Also, we will look for linking all the life cycle analysis results to supply to consumers “sustainability” information about the product they are consuming.
Finally, we are looking forward to evaluating the replication potential of these methodologies to other agro-food industries and for their direct application in sustainability measurement by producers.