The magnitude of the carbon footprint associated with the production of any product varies
depending on the extent, or boundary, of the system selected, which defines the up and downstream
processes that are included in the assessment. In this study, we define the boundary conditions as the
‘cradle to farm gate’, meaning that all GHG emissions occurring prior to cattle leaving the farm gate
will be included. The IPCC [6] methodology is the basis for the carbon footprint estimates; it relies on
a tiered system which is based on the availability of emission factors associated with activity data.
Tier I relies on default empirical emission factors published by the IPCC [6], and is the simplest
approach available. Tier II is still empirical in nature, as the emission factors are usually derived from
experimental data