Product Carbon Footprint · GHG Protocol Product
Sector PCF — Food Calculator | Beef, Dairy, Crops & Beverages
Cradle-to-gate product carbon footprints for food and beverage products, built up from farm-gate activity data per the GHG Protocol Product Life Cycle Standard and ISO 14067:2018. Choose a product family, a declared functional unit, and a region; the calculator resolves IPCC and DEFRA emission factors, applies your stated co-product allocation, and returns a per-unit PCF with a full per-driver breakdown and audit trail. AR6 GWP-100 for biogenic methane; AR5 GWP-100 for fertiliser N₂O and packaging materials — both disclosed transparently.
This is a build-up calculator, not a product database. It does not look up a stored “beef” or “milk” number. It builds the product carbon footprint (PCF) from the activity data you enter — head of livestock, kilograms of nitrogen, kilowatt-hours, kilograms of packaging — resolving each line to a verified emission factor, summing to a farm-gate total, applying your declared co-product allocation, and dividing by your functional unit. Every number is traceable; nothing is a black box.
System boundary (cradle-to-gate, fixed in v1): The boundary runs from input production through the farm or processing gate, including packaging where entered. Land-use change, the use stage, retail, consumer use, end-of-life, and Module D (benefits beyond the boundary) are out of scope unless you add them as custom lines. LUC in particular can be added as a custom line; for a full land-sector inventory use the dedicated FLAG Emissions Calculator.
Functional unit (declared, per family): Dairy — per kg fat-and-protein-corrected milk (FPCM) or per litre raw milk; Beef — per kg carcass weight or per kg boneless meat; Crops — per kg or per tonne at the farm gate; Beverages — per litre or per hectolitre packaged. The functional unit is the denominator of the PCF and the single most important comparability decision you make.
Co-product allocation (your stated choice, applied linearly): Where a farm system yields more than one saleable product — milk and meat from a dairy herd, grain and straw from a cereal crop — only the share of emissions attributable to the declared product belongs in its PCF. You enter the allocation percentage; the calculator applies it linearly to the farm-gate total. The default is 85% to milk for Dairy (consistent with the IDF biophysical milk:meat split) and 100% for the other families. The calculator does not auto-compute the IDF split — the allocation method is a reported decision you own and document.
GWP basis (mixed, disclosed): Biogenic methane from enteric fermentation and manure is weighted at AR6 GWP-100 (27.9). Fertiliser N₂O (via the DEFRA combined factor) and packaging-material factors are carried at their published AR5 GWP-100 basis. This mixed basis is standard practice where factor libraries have not all migrated to AR6; it is disclosed on every line of the audit trail so a verifier can see exactly which GWP set applied where.
Factor provenance: Enteric, manure, and rice methane — IPCC 2006 Guidelines with 2019 Refinement, regional Tier 1 rows where available. Fertiliser N₂O — DEFRA combined direct + indirect aggregate (5.765 kg CO₂e/kg N applied). Electricity — location-based grid factor. Packaging — ÖKOBAUDAT and European Aluminium module A1–A3. Spend-based screening — US EPA. Excluded by default: beef-cattle manure (no MB factor — see methodology notes), the use and end-of-life stages, and embodied emissions not entered as a line.
Yield and co-product allocation are your assumptions (not MasterBrain factors) until a curated food.yields.* reference block ships. Defaults are representative literature values — replace with your own farm data.
Add emission sources and the system output above to calculate
Results appear instantly. A contribution-by-category bar, source hotspots (Pareto), a data-quality / confidence meter, a separate biogenic-CH₄ note and the full audit trail appear after calculation.
Results are indicative cradle-to-gate Product Carbon Footprints for food and beverage products, aligned with the GHG Protocol Product Life Cycle Standard and ISO 14067:2018, reported per the declared unit you choose. There is no published per-product food PCF in MasterBrain — the figure is built up from IPCC 2006/2019 AFOLU farm-gate emission factors (enteric fermentation, manure management, fertiliser N₂O) and MasterBrain grid, fuel, packaging and freight factors, then divided by the system output and apportioned to the product by a co-product allocation factor. Livestock and fertiliser factors are Tier 1 generic defaults; yield and allocation are your own assumptions (representative literature defaults until a curated reference dataset ships). Land-use change, the use stage, retail distribution, consumer cooking/waste and Module D are outside this boundary unless explicitly added as a line. Biogenic methane from livestock is included in the headline per IPCC. Generic Tier 1 factors and assumed yields suit early-stage estimating only — replace the most material inputs with country-specific (Tier 2) and primary farm data, refine the allocation method, and complete a critical review under ISO 14067 / ISO 14071 before publishing a PCF, issuing an EPD, or exchanging product footprints.
A product carbon footprint is the number a retailer puts on a scorecard, a competitor cites in a comparison, and an auditor traces line by line before it goes into an Environmental Product Declaration or a supplier’s Scope 3 Category 1 return. In the food and beverage sector it is also the number most likely to be wrong — not because the arithmetic is hard, but because two defensible practitioners can compute wildly different footprints for the same kilogram of beef simply by choosing a different functional unit or a different allocation rule.
This calculator builds the PCF up from farm-gate activity data, exposes every emission factor and its GWP basis, and forces the two decisions that drive most disagreement — the functional unit and the co-product allocation — into the open as stated, documented choices rather than hidden assumptions. The result conforms to ISO 14067 and is accounted under the GHG Protocol Product Life Cycle Standard, with a full audit trail and data-quality grading on every export.
A product carbon footprint is the unit of currency in supply-chain decarbonisation. Your customers need it for their Scope 3 Category 1 (purchased goods) inventory; an EPD or retailer scorecard needs it under ISO 14067; and your own land-sector emissions sit upstream in FLAG. This calculator produces the per-unit PCF and the audit trail; pair it with the FLAG calculator for the farm-gate land-sector inventory those products draw on.
Build Your FLAG Land-Sector Inventory →
What Is a Product Carbon Footprint? Functional Units, Boundaries, and Build-Up Accounting
A product carbon footprint (PCF) is the total greenhouse gas emissions associated with a defined quantity of a product, expressed in CO₂e per functional unit, calculated over a stated system boundary. For food and beverages the functional unit is typically per kilogram or per litre of product at a defined point in the supply chain. Unlike a corporate inventory, which counts the total emissions of an organisation, a PCF normalises emissions to a single unit of a single product — which is precisely why the choice of that unit, and the choice of which emissions belong inside the boundary, determine the answer as much as the underlying activity data does.
This Is Build-Up Accounting, Not a Database Lookup
It is worth being explicit about what this tool is and is not. It does not store a “beef” number or a “milk” number and hand it back. It builds the footprint from the activity data you enter — head of livestock, kilograms of applied nitrogen, kilowatt-hours of grid electricity, kilograms of packaging board — resolving each to a verified emission factor, summing to a farm-gate total, applying your declared allocation, and dividing by your functional unit. The advantage is traceability: every line in the result maps to an input, a factor, a gas, and a GWP set. The cost is that the quality of the output depends entirely on the quality of your activity data, which is exactly as it should be for a PCF intended to survive third-party verification.
The Functional Unit Decision
The functional unit is the denominator of the PCF, and changing it can reverse a comparison without changing a single emission. A kilogram of beef and a kilogram of lentils are not nutritionally equivalent; comparing them per kilogram of mass, per kilogram of protein, and per kilocalorie produces three different rankings. The calculator offers the standard sector-appropriate units per family, and the right choice depends on the question you are answering and the comparability rules of the framework you are reporting under.
Imagine two products with identical total emissions for a production batch. Declare one per litre of finished, diluted beverage and the other per litre of concentrate, and the concentrate looks several times worse — even though the same liquid ends up in the same glass. Declare beef per kilogram of carcass weight versus per kilogram of boneless meat, and the boneless figure is higher because the same emissions are spread over less saleable mass. None of this is manipulation; it is the unavoidable consequence of normalisation. The defence against it is disclosure: state the functional unit prominently, and never compare two PCFs computed on different units.
Included vs Excluded — The Cradle-to-Gate Boundary
| Included in this calculator (cradle-to-gate) | Excluded — out of v1 boundary |
|---|---|
| Livestock enteric fermentation (CH₄, biogenic, AR6 GWP 27.9) | Land-use change (add as a custom line, or use the FLAG calculator) |
| Manure management CH₄ (dairy cattle, pigs — see notes on beef) | Use stage (cooking, refrigeration in the home) |
| Fertiliser N₂O — direct + indirect (5.765 kg CO₂e/kg N applied) | Retail and distribution beyond the declared gate |
| On-farm and processing electricity (location-based grid factor) | End-of-life of packaging (Module C) |
| On-farm and processing thermal fuel combustion | Module D (recycling benefits beyond the boundary) |
| Packaging materials (PET, board, aluminium, glass — A1–A3) | Capital goods (machinery, building embodied carbon) |
| Inbound transport (parametric) and spend-based screening | Emissions not entered as an activity line |
Beef PCF — The Four Drivers and Why the Number Swings So Widely
Beef is the most carbon-intensive mainstream food product per kilogram, and also the one whose published footprints vary most between sources. The variance is rarely a factor-quality problem; it is an allocation and boundary problem. Before debating whose number is right, it pays to understand the four physical drivers the calculator builds the beef PCF from.
- Enteric fermentation. Ruminant digestion produces biogenic methane in the rumen. This is usually the single largest line in a beef PCF. The calculator resolves it regionally where a row exists — the IPCC Tier 1 per-head methane figure weighted to CO₂e at AR6 GWP-100 (27.9).
- Feed production. Growing or buying feed carries its own upstream footprint — fertiliser N₂O on feed crops, cultivation energy, and any feed-related land use. In a build-up model this enters as the relevant crop or spend-based lines rather than a single “feed” factor.
- Manure management. Stored manure decomposes anaerobically, releasing additional methane and a smaller N₂O contribution. Note the honest gap: MasterBrain does not currently hold a beef-cattle manure methane row, and the engine does not substitute a hardcoded fallback. Beef manure is therefore excluded unless you enter a custom factor — a limitation disclosed in the audit panel rather than silently filled.
- Land-use change. Where pasture expansion has cleared native ecosystems, the one-time carbon stock loss can dwarf every annual line. LUC is out of the default cradle-to-gate boundary; enter it as a custom line or compute it in the FLAG calculator and bring it across.
Because feed and land-use change can each be larger than enteric fermentation depending on the system, and because allocation between meat and co-products (hides, offal, tallow) is a stated choice, two honest beef PCFs can differ by a factor of two or more. The calculator’s contribution-by-driver bar makes the composition visible, which is the first step to a defensible comparison.
Dairy PCF — FPCM Normalisation and the Milk:Meat Allocation Problem
Dairy is the most fully tuned product family in v1, and the one the built-in worked example uses. Two methodological features distinguish a credible dairy PCF: fat-and-protein-corrected milk (FPCM) normalisation, and the allocation of herd emissions between milk and meat.
FPCM — Normalising Milk for Composition
Raw milk varies in fat and protein content, and richer milk carries more embedded energy and emissions per litre. Comparing footprints per litre of raw milk therefore penalises low-fat herds unfairly. The dairy sector solves this with fat-and-protein-corrected milk (FPCM) — a standardised unit (4.0% fat, 3.3% protein) using the International Dairy Federation formula. The calculator converts raw-milk volume to FPCM mass before computing the per-unit PCF, so two herds with different compositions are compared on a like-for-like basis. The conversion also folds in the 1.03 kg/L density step that turns a volume into a mass.
The Milk:Meat Allocation Problem
A dairy herd produces milk and, eventually, meat (cull cows and surplus calves). Both are saleable; both share the herd’s emissions. Attributing 100% of herd emissions to milk over-states the milk footprint and lets the meat ride for free. The dairy sector’s convention, from the IDF, is a biophysical allocation based on the feed energy required for milk versus for body-weight gain — which works out to roughly 85% of emissions to milk for a typical herd. The calculator’s default allocation is 85% to milk; you can override it, but you must state and document whatever you choose. Critically, the calculator applies your stated percentage linearly — it does not recompute the IDF biophysical split from herd parameters, so the percentage is your reported decision, not a derived output.
Crops PCF — Fertiliser N₂O, User-Supplied Yield, and Honest Limits
The crops family is a transparent cradle-to-farm-gate build-up, and v1 is deliberately lighter-tuned than dairy. Stating its limits plainly is part of what makes it trustworthy.
A crop PCF in this calculator is built from: fertiliser N₂O via the DEFRA combined factor (5.765 kg CO₂e per kg of nitrogen element applied — direct plus indirect pathways, applied identically to synthetic and organic N in v1); on-farm fuel and electricity for cultivation, irrigation, and drying; optional inbound transport; and an optional spend-based screening line for inputs you cannot model bottom-up. The system output — the yield that becomes the denominator — is entered by you. MasterBrain holds no crop-yield default in v1, so there is no built-in tonnes-per-hectare assumption to get wrong; the yield is your input and your documented assumption.
The unit matters for fertiliser. Enter kilograms of nitrogen element applied, not kilograms of fertiliser product. A 100 kg sack of urea contains roughly 46 kg N; entering 100 kg as if it were N over-states fertiliser N₂O by about 117%. Always convert via the product’s N percentage before entering.
The DEFRA combined factor treats all applied nitrogen with one number. A more precise approach disaggregates the IPCC 2019 soil-nitrogen pathway by climate (wet vs dry), by source (synthetic, organic, crop residue), and by the indirect volatilisation and leaching fractions — and adds crop-residue and residue-burning emissions explicitly. MasterBrain holds those disaggregated pathways, but the v1 crops engine does not yet wire them in. A climate-specific IPCC N₂O pathway and crop-residue handling are planned enhancements. Until they ship, crops uses the combined DEFRA factor — accurate enough for screening and supplier-data purposes, and honestly labelled as such.
Beverages PCF — Packaging, Dilution, and the Functional-Unit Trap
For most packaged beverages the liquid itself is a minor contributor and the packaging is the hotspot. The calculator carries packaging at module A1–A3 (raw material to factory gate) using established material factors.
| Packaging material | Factor | Source |
|---|---|---|
| PET plastic | 3,863.90 kg CO₂e/tonne | ÖKOBAUDAT (A1–A3) |
| Paper / board | 1,199.73 kg CO₂e/tonne | ÖKOBAUDAT (A1–A3) |
| Aluminium (recycled / secondary) | 0.26 kg CO₂e/kg | European Aluminium (A1–A3) |
| Glass (container, flint) | 0.21 t CO₂/t glass (melt only) | IPCC 2006 Vol 3 |
Read the glass factor carefully. The 0.21 figure is the process CO₂ from melting only — it is not a full cradle-to-gate glass footprint, which would add the energy of melting, batch transport, and forming. Where glass is material to your result, treat 0.21 as a floor and add the energy lines explicitly, or enter a full cradle-to-gate glass factor as a custom line. The recycled-aluminium factor, conversely, is low precisely because secondary aluminium avoids the enormous smelting energy of primary metal; do not apply it to primary-aluminium packaging.
The Functional-Unit Trap
Beverages are where the functional-unit decision bites hardest, because dilution and pack size let the same liquid carry very different per-litre numbers. A concentrate declared per litre of concentrate will always look worse than the same product declared per litre as consumed. A small single-serve pack carries more packaging per litre than a large format. Neither is wrong; both must be disclosed. Declare the functional unit at the point of consumption where you can, state pack format, and never compare a concentrate PCF to a ready-to-drink PCF without normalising first.
Worked Example — UK Dairy Herd, Reproduced to the Digit
This is the example the calculator boots with: a 200-cow UK dairy herd, declared per kilogram of FPCM. Every figure below is reproduced from the live engine (MasterBrain v2026.203) and reconciles exactly. Reproducing the on-screen default to the digit is deliberate — you can check the tool against this page and the page against the tool.
Allocation Methods — The Single Biggest Source of PCF Disagreement
If two credible practitioners hand you two different footprints for the same product, allocation is the most likely reason. When a system produces more than one saleable output, the emissions must be divided between them — and there is no single physically correct way to do it. The method is a value choice, and the standards require you to state it.
The Four Common Approaches
| Method | Basis of split | Best suited to | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Economic | Relative market value of each co-product | Co-products with very different prices (meat vs hides) | Footprint moves with volatile prices, not physics |
| Mass | Relative physical mass of each output | Outputs of similar value and function | Penalises heavy low-value co-products like whey or bran |
| Protein / nutritional | Relative protein or energy content | Comparing foods by nutritional function | Not accepted by every framework; declare explicitly |
| Biophysical (IDF, dairy) | Feed energy for milk vs body-weight gain | Dairy milk:meat split specifically | Requires herd parameters; ≈85% milk for typical herds |
How This Calculator Handles It
The calculator takes your allocation as a single percentage — the share of farm-gate emissions assigned to the declared product — and applies it linearly to the farm-gate total. The default is 85% to milk for Dairy (the IDF biophysical convention) and 100% for Beef, Crops, and Beverages. The engine does not recompute the IDF split from herd weight and yield; the percentage you enter is a stated, reported decision. This is intentional: a transparent number you have chosen and documented is more auditable than an opaque one the tool derived behind the scenes. Record your method and percentage in your methodology notes, and use the same basis across every product you compare.
Standards Landscape — GHG Protocol Product, ISO 14067, PEF, and PAS 2050
A food PCF sits at the intersection of several standards. Knowing which one you are reporting under determines the comparability rules, the allocation guidance, and the disclosure requirements.
| Standard | Role | Relationship to this calculator |
|---|---|---|
| GHG Protocol Product Life Cycle Standard | The accounting frame most food and beverage companies report product emissions under | Primary anchor — the engine’s method follows its accounting rules |
| ISO 14067:2018 | The international standard specifically for quantifying a product carbon footprint | Conformance co-anchor — the result is structured to conform |
| EU Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) | The European Commission’s multi-criteria product footprint method, with category rules (PEFCRs) | Regional alternative — PEF dairy/beverage PEFCRs may prescribe different allocation; reconcile if reporting under PEF |
| PAS 2050 | The 2008 British specification that pioneered product carbon footprinting | Lineage only — largely superseded by ISO 14067; mentioned for historical context, not used here |
The practical guidance: account under the GHG Protocol Product Standard, structure your result to conform to ISO 14067, and if your customer or regulator requires PEF, check the relevant Product Environmental Footprint Category Rules — they may mandate a specific functional unit and allocation method that differ from the defaults here. PAS 2050 you will only encounter in older documentation; treat it as the ancestor, not the current rule.
How PCF Feeds Scope 3 Category 1 and FLAG Reporting
A product carbon footprint is rarely the end goal in itself — it is an input to a larger inventory. Understanding where it flows tells you how precise it needs to be.
Into Your Customers’ Scope 3 Category 1
When you sell a product, its PCF becomes part of your customer’s Scope 3 Category 1 (Purchased Goods and Services) inventory. A supplier-specific PCF — your actual product footprint, audited — lets your customer replace a generic spend-based estimate with primary data, which is exactly the improvement their own decarbonisation targets demand. This is why retailers and large manufacturers increasingly request PCFs from their suppliers: your footprint is their data.
Alongside FLAG and the Land Sector
For agricultural products, the farm-gate emissions in your PCF overlap with the Forest, Land & Agriculture (FLAG) category. The same enteric, manure, and fertiliser activity appears in both a product footprint and a corporate FLAG inventory — viewed through different lenses. If you have operational control of the land, those emissions are your Scope 1 FLAG; if you buy the commodity, they are your Scope 3 Category 1. The FLAG Emissions Calculator handles the corporate land-sector inventory, including land-use change and the SBTi FLAG 20% threshold; this PCF calculator handles the per-product view. Use them together: FLAG for the enterprise inventory, PCF for the product line your customers ask about.
Audit Checklist — Eight Common Food PCF Errors
Third-party verification of a food PCF — under ISO 14067, an EPD programme, or a customer’s supplier-data protocol — traces each line from activity data to the reported per-unit figure. These eight are the most common sources of restated footprints and qualified opinions.
Data Sources, Factor Provenance, and Uncertainty Ranges
Emission Factor Provenance
All factors resolve from MasterBrain v2026.203 and trace to primary publications:
- Enteric and manure CH₄ — IPCC 2006 Guidelines (Volume 4, Chapter 10) with 2019 Refinement, regional Tier 1 rows where available, weighted at AR6 GWP-100 for biogenic CH₄ (27.9).
- Fertiliser N₂O (5.765 kg CO₂e/kg N) — DEFRA combined direct + indirect aggregate, AR5 GWP-100 basis, applied to synthetic and organic N alike in v1.
- Electricity — location-based grid factor (UK 0.13096 kg CO₂e/kWh).
- Packaging — ÖKOBAUDAT module A1–A3 for PET and board; European Aluminium for recycled aluminium; IPCC 2006 Vol 3 for glass melt CO₂.
- Spend-based screening — US EPA supply-chain GHG factors (crop production, food manufacturing), AR6 basis, for completeness lines only.
Uncertainty Disclosure
| Source | Factor category | Indicative uncertainty |
|---|---|---|
| IPCC Tier 1 per-head | Enteric fermentation | ±30% |
| IPCC Tier 1 per-head | Manure management | ±30% |
| DEFRA / IPCC Tier 1 | Fertiliser N₂O | ±50% |
| Location-based grid | Electricity | ±10% |
| ÖKOBAUDAT A1–A3 | Packaging materials | ±20% |
| EPA supply-chain | Spend-based screening | Order-of-magnitude only |
Data-Quality Grading on Every Export
The calculator grades each line and the result as a whole. The export reports the share of primary data (your measured activity data), secondary data (Tier 1 generic factors), and screening data (spend-based fallbacks), and assigns an overall confidence. The built-in worked example, built entirely on Tier 1 generic factors, grades as secondary with “Medium (Tier 1 generic)” confidence. Moving material lines from Tier 1 to site-specific measurement is what raises the grade — and what a customer or verifier will ask for where the product is material to their inventory.
Methodology Notes and Limitations
Build-up, not lookup. The tool holds no per-product PCFs. Output quality depends on your activity data quality. This is by design — a traceable build-up survives verification where a black-box number does not.
Allocation is your stated choice, applied linearly. The default 85% milk / 100% other is a starting point, not a derived value. The engine does not recompute the IDF biophysical split; document the method and percentage you use.
Mixed GWP basis. Biogenic CH₄ is AR6 GWP-100; fertiliser N₂O and packaging are AR5 GWP-100. Disclosed per line in the audit trail. An all-AR6 option is a documented future enhancement.
Beef manure excluded by default. No MasterBrain beef-cattle manure factor exists and no fallback is hardcoded. Beef manure is excluded unless entered as a custom factor; the audit panel flags the absence. Poultry enteric is zero (IPCC publishes no Tier 1 enteric factor for monogastrics).
Crops is a lighter v1 build-up. Fertiliser N₂O uses the DEFRA combined factor; yield is user-supplied with no built-in default. A climate-specific, IPCC-disaggregated soil-N pathway (synthetic / organic / residue, wet / dry, volatilisation and leaching fractions) and explicit crop-residue and residue-burning handling exist in MasterBrain but are not wired into v1 — they are planned enhancements.
Glass is melt-CO₂ only. The 0.21 t/t glass factor omits melting energy and forming; treat it as a floor and add energy lines where glass is material.
Cradle-to-gate, fixed. Use stage, retail, end-of-life, and Module D are out of the v1 boundary. Land-use change is out of scope unless added as a custom line; use the FLAG calculator for a full land-sector inventory.
Frequently Asked Questions
A product carbon footprint is the total greenhouse gas emissions associated with a defined quantity of a product, expressed as CO₂e per functional unit over a stated system boundary. For food and beverages it is typically per kilogram or per litre at a defined supply-chain point. It differs from a corporate inventory by normalising emissions to a single unit of a single product, which makes the functional unit and the system boundary as important to the answer as the activity data.
Almost always because of the functional unit, the system boundary, or the allocation method — not a factor error. The same beef can be declared per kg carcass or per kg boneless; the same dairy emissions can be split 85% or 100% to milk; the same beverage can be measured as concentrate or as consumed. Each is defensible, and each gives a different number. This is why both ISO 14067 and the GHG Protocol Product Standard require you to disclose all three, and why you should never compare two PCFs without checking they share the same unit, boundary, and allocation.
FPCM is fat-and-protein-corrected milk — milk standardised to 4.0% fat and 3.3% protein using the International Dairy Federation formula. Raw milk varies in composition, and richer milk carries more embedded emissions per litre, so comparing footprints per litre of raw milk is unfair to low-fat herds. Converting to FPCM puts every herd on a like-for-like basis. The conversion also folds in the 1.03 kg/L density step that turns a milk volume into a mass.
A dairy herd produces both milk and meat, and both share the herd’s emissions. The IDF biophysical convention allocates emissions according to the feed energy needed for milk versus for body-weight gain, which works out to roughly 85% to milk for a typical herd. The calculator uses 85% as the default but applies whatever percentage you enter linearly — it does not recompute the biophysical split from herd parameters. The percentage you use is a stated decision you should document.
Not by default. The v1 boundary is cradle-to-gate and excludes land-use change, the use stage, retail, end-of-life, and Module D. You can add LUC as a custom line if you have the figure. For a full land-sector inventory — including LUC amortisation and the SBTi FLAG 20% threshold — use the dedicated FLAG Emissions Calculator and bring the relevant value across.
MasterBrain currently holds manure methane factors for dairy cattle and pigs, but not for beef cattle, and the engine does not substitute a hardcoded fallback. Rather than fill the gap silently with an unverified number, it excludes beef manure and flags the absence in the audit panel. If manure is material to your beef system, enter it as a custom factor. This is a deliberate transparency choice — a disclosed gap is more auditable than a guessed value.
Biogenic methane from enteric fermentation and manure is weighted at AR6 GWP-100 (27.9), the current IPCC value. Fertiliser N₂O (via the DEFRA combined factor) and packaging-material factors are carried at the AR5 GWP-100 basis their source libraries publish. A mixed basis is common where not every factor library has migrated to AR6; the important thing is disclosure, and the calculator tags the GWP set on every line of the audit trail. An all-AR6 option is a planned enhancement.
Yes — that is one of its main uses. A supplier-specific PCF lets your customer replace a generic spend-based estimate in their Scope 3 Category 1 inventory with primary data. The audit trail and data-quality grading on the export are designed to support that hand-off. For the result to count as primary data, make sure the material lines are built from your measured activity data rather than spend-based screening fallbacks.
You have built a cradle-to-gate product carbon footprint with a full per-driver breakdown and audit trail. The PCF is a building block: it feeds your customers’ Scope 3 inventories, supports an EPD or retailer scorecard, and sits alongside your corporate land-sector and combustion inventories.
For agricultural products, run the FLAG calculator for the corporate land-sector view, then use this PCF for the per-product figure your customers request. Together they cover both the enterprise inventory and the product line.
A product footprint is one view of the same physical emissions. If your product is agricultural, the farm-gate emissions also belong in a corporate land-sector inventory — build it with the FLAG Emissions Calculator, which handles land-use change amortisation and the SBTi FLAG 20% threshold. If you have on-site fuel combustion (boilers, dryers, CHP) to account for in Scope 1, complete it with the Scope 1 Stationary Combustion Calculator. Both export audit trails that combine cleanly with this PCF.
More calculators in this series