Comparing UK turkey production systems using analytical error propagation in uncertainty analysis

The aim of this study was to quantify the environmental impacts per unit of live weight of the main UK turkey systems, namely stag and hen production with either controlled or natural ventilation. An LCA modeling framework, based on system approach and mechanistic sub-models was applied for this purpose. For the first time, detailed production data from the industry was used as input. The differences between the systems were analyzed using an analytical “top-down” method for uncertainty analysis, developed specifically for this study. The results show that there were only small, mainly non-significant differences in the impacts between the systems, affected mainly by their feed conversion ratio and slaughter weight. The novel uncertainty analysis method makes it possible to obtain exact quantification of the overall uncertainties of outputs of complex systems models without the need of time consuming and approximate Monte Carlo simulations.