Calculation and labeling of carbon footprint in food products

This report contains the results of a pilot project aimed to calculate the carbon footprint of some food products and analyse the constraints of its communication to consumers. The initiative was carried out between January 2017 and May 2018, with three basic consumption products, following the methodology of Life Cycle Assessment. The different versions of carbon footprint labelling were tested with a set of randomly chosen
consumers, representing different cultural and socio-economic levels.
The interest of calculating the carbon footprint has been demonstrated, as it offers the consumers information to assess the climate change impacts of producing and distributing the products they acquire. This pilot test has also shown the complexity and cost involved in these tasks, both in the calculation and in the labelling. It is recommended to introduce the latter with publicity campaigns, general or in store, through notorious but very significant symbols of the information contained in the labels. This could be done progressively depending on the population's growing knowledge of the emissions associated with the food production.