Spain

INTERPORC: The Spanish pork sector, a benchmark in sustainability

Pork

Alberto Herranz, director of the Interprofessional of White Coated Pigs (INTERPORC), has stated that “few sectors have deployed as much effort and made as much progress in defending the environment as the Spanish pig sector.” . This was stated in his speech at the '333 Experience Facilities and Environment 2023' conference held in Lleida.

Posted on Nov 20 ,00:10

In his presentation titled 'the Spanish pork sector, a benchmark in sustainability', Herranz presented various official data from the Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge (MITECO). Figures that demonstrate the great advances in environmental sustainability of the sector in the last 30 years.

For Herranz, "the search for sustainable solutions in pork production is continuous". A commitment that generalizes to all professionals in the sector and that has translated into "important emissions reductions due to the efficiency achieved in parameters such as animal feed, the genetic, breeding and health conditions, energy improvement, reducing the water footprint, or the treatment of slurry and its agronomic application".

Among many other figures, Herranz detailed that "between 1990 and 2021, pork has reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by 42.9% and today it only accounts for 2.43% of the total of all GHG emissions in Spain". He also recalled that "in the last thirty years the water footprint has been reduced by 30% for each kilo of pork produced at the farm level".

Finally, he highlighted that "total ammonia emissions estimated for 2021 have been reduced by 2.7%, compared to 1990, and by 2.4%, compared to 2020 estimates". Furthermore, also in ammonia, "in 2021 a reduction of 5.9% has been achieved compared to 2005, that is, the annual reduction target of 3% has almost doubled".

Despite the good data in the sector, as the director of INTERPORC recalled, pork continues to work to improve. In this sense, he highlighted that "the sector wants and can be increasingly sustainable in all three aspects: social, economic and environmental".

And that is why he stated that the Interprofessional is developing "a roadmap focused on four major areas: climate change, air quality, water and circular economy". A document whose objective is to provide companies with the information they need to continue implementing changes that improve their environmental parameters.