Carbon emission oriented life cycle assessment and optimization strategy for meat supply chain

Reducing greenhouse gas (GHGs) emissions is imperative to achieve sustainable meat production and supply. Few previous studies have assessed the carbon emissions of the whole meat supply chain from the sheep fattening stage to the meat distribution stage. Therefore, this study established a boundary model of the carbon emission system of the mutton supply chain and adopted the life cycle assessment (LCA) method to comprehensively analyze the carbon emissions during breeding, transportation, processing, and distribution, and then assessed the overall carbon emissions, and optimized the route planning of the supply chain subsystems using improved genetic algorithms (GA) in order to reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions. The results show (1) The fattening sheep process generates a relatively large share of carbon emissions, but the unit emissions are stable. The carbon emissions from the transportation and marketing phases are lower than those from the fattening phase, but their carbon emissions are uncertain, which is the focus of optimization. (2) By optimizing the routes of the subsystems in the life cycle analysis model, carbon emissions due to changes in route planning can be reduced by 24.19%. Therefore, life cycle analysis can comprehensively assess the carbon emissions and total carbon emissions of each link in the mutton supply chain, and the optimization strategy plays an important role in energy consumption and carbon emissions.