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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Vet. Sci.

Sec. One Health

The effects of PRRS on the environmental impact of pig production: a Life Cycle Assessment study†

Provisionally accepted
Greg J ThomaGreg J Thoma1Lucina Galina PantojaLucina Galina Pantoja2Daniel C L LinharesDaniel C L Linhares3Ana Paula Serafini Poeta SilvaAna Paula Serafini Poeta Silva3Lindsay CaseLindsay Case2Pieter W KnapPieter W Knap4*
  • 1Resilience Services PLLC, Denver, United States
  • 2Genus-PIC, Hendersonville, United States
  • 3Iowa State University, Ames, United States
  • 4Genus-PIC, Isernhagen, Germany

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The Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome (PRRS) is a viral pig disease that increases mortality rates and reduces (re)production performance. This worsens a farm's whole-enterprise feed conversion ratio, which increases its greenhouse gas emission. PRRSV elimination should then result in mitigation of global warming. This study quantifies such mitigation of global warming and of other environmental impact categories such as eutrophication and land use by Life Cycle Assessment. The software package openLCA converted material and energy flows to impact categories of frameworks ReCiPe-2016, PEF-3.1, and IPCC-2021. Flows came from data recorded on 173 PRRS outbreaks in 113 sow farms (1.3 million sows), and on 5,650 all-in-all-out groups of wean-to-finish pigs in 63 farms (26 million pigs). We find that the environmental impact of PRRSV-negative North American farms is 4-6 % lower than of the North American industry average (a mix of PRRSV-negative and PRRSV-positive farms), and 9-17 % lower than of PRRSV-positive farms.

Keywords: LCA, PRRs, pig, Environmental impact, Climate Change, Global Warming

Received: 09 May 2025; Accepted: 17 Nov 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Thoma, Galina Pantoja, Linhares, Serafini Poeta Silva, Case and Knap. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: Pieter W Knap, pieter.knap@genusplc.com

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Supplementary Material