New software to calculate the environmental and carbon footprint of pork sector products
PIGPEF has been designed to be intuitive and easy to use for both professionals and non-professionals.
In a context such as the current one, in which the sustainability and environmental footprint of products is becoming an increasingly important purchasing criterion for consumers, companies in the pork sector are beginning to invest resources to meet this growing demand. Part of these resources are allocated to companies to have a greater knowledge of their own production processes, to the application of complex methodologies and external verification processes that must certify that the commercial communication they make of their products is transparent and honest.
Faced with this reality, the BETA Technological Center of the University of Vic – Central University of Catalonia (UVic-UCC) has developed PIGPEF, an innovative software that allows to easily calculate the environmental footprint and carbon footprint of the production chain of the pork sector. The objective is that in the labeling of the final products the customer is guaranteed that the company has been respectful with the environment and that the generation of CO₂ in the production process has been the minimum possible. In the pork sector, the amount of CO₂ emitted during the production of a product depends on aspects such as the composition of the feed, the management of waste and slurry, or the type of transformation required for each product.
According to Joan Colón, head of CT BETA’s Software Development Group, “the PIGPEF software has been designed to be intuitive and easy to use, both for professionals and non-professionals”, and to become “a valid option for many companies that want to incorporate sustainability criteria into their business decisions more easily”.
The results obtained from the use of PIGPEF follow EU standards in the field of product environmental footprinting. In addition, it facilitates environmental footprint verification according to ISO14064 or 14067 standards, among others, providing essential tools to better communicate sustainable practices to the pork industry.
A tool made under the guidance of the sector
The development of PIGPEF has been carried out between CT BETA, INNOVACC, the Catalan Meat and Alternative Protein Cluster, 333 Corporate -official distributor of PIGPEF-, the Lleida Swine Sanitation Group and the Spanish Cluster of Pig Producers (i+Cerdo). The project has been funded by the extraordinary call for aid for innovative business clusters of 2022 of the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Tourism, within the framework of the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan.
PIGPEF is not the only software of this type being developed by CT BETA. As Joan Colón explains, “we are currently working with other prototypes that can soon be applied to more sectors of the food industry”, always with the vision of reducing the need to use and acquire complex professional applications and limiting the need for specialized external consultancy.
