Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors,

The manuscript is interesting, well written and discussed

There are several major issues that need to be addressed.

I would like to point out that the article is a continuation of other studies.

“Data related to the life cycle assessment of 44 artisanally produced french protected designation of origin (PDO) cheeses”;  Adeline Cortesi, Laure Dijoux, Gwenola Yannou-Le Bris, Caroline Pénicaud

In my opinion, it would be appropriate to combine the information and publish the article Part I and Part II.

This article is only quoted in the presented work …? ((11) Cortesi, A., Dijoux, L., Yannou-Le Bris, G., Pénicaud, C. Data related to the Life Cycle Assessment of 44 artisanally produced French Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) cheeses. Data in Brief 2022 (accepted on 16 June 2022).

*) Throughout the text, attention should be paid to the citation of items, and the indication of the names of tables and figures - the text is not bold

The production of milk and the maturation of cheese ("hot spots") and the type of cheese (short-matured or long-matured) have a significant impact on production costs, material consumption, optimization of maturation and thus have a significant environmental impact.

The manufacturer may modify the recipe to prevent this. Only if it has a moral right to a method of technology that has been developed for tens or hundreds of years to produce a given cheese. This is inconsistent with the philosophy and the essence of PDO products - protecting the region, raw material, animals, the production process and the product itself, which is to have the highest nutritional value for the consumer.

P: 85 ... nothing is known about the animals, herds where the raw material is produced. It is about breeds, housing system, herd size, nutrition, etc.

After all, cheeses come from different regions, and the environmental conditions are very different, especially at the stage of milk production.

It should be remembered that the production of milk, the conditions in which it is created or the species of animal considered have a decisive influence on the load of the cheeses in the context of the analyzed factors.

P: 90-93 repetition from work purpose

P: 118-119 for which cheeses do these methods apply - more detail please ...

P: 123 more information than just 1 kg of cheese taken "at the end of maturation" (what it means), there may be different errors in collecting material from the same cheese - why was it not decided to take the cheese depending on the production date, several samples taken I think for the right ...

P: 137-138 Was the use of milk for cheese production controlled or only verified by 2 experts?

P: 159 the analyzed factors are very important, but I have doubts about their differentiation in the context of different cheeses or the place of production

P: 166 more information about the XLStat cheese base, what about the extreme results have they been verified ???

P: 173 the nutritional information found on the internet is not the same as cheese sample analysis ??? Even worse with the nutritional information of a similar cheese

P: 191-197 the results need to be discussed in more detail or the graph should be redrafted - analyzing all the cheeses together distorts the picture and gives a lot of variability.

P: Figure 3 needs to be discussed in more detail

P: 245-251 what kinds of milk is this information for (cattle, goats, sheep) ???

P: 252-… give my suggestions about the type of milk

P: 274 good that there is a reference to the article - therefore the suggestion that it could be part I of the whole article?

P: 300 why Brie de Melun cheese?

P: 408-409 the number of surveyed entities in the tested group is significant - three for some are too few

The discussion of the results is consistent with the obtained research results. There is generally little discussion of the results in relation to other studies.

Summing up, I can say that due to the interesting results obtained, sometimes controversial the work should be accepted for publication after taking into account the reviewer's suggestions.

After making corrections and supplementing, the article can be accepted for publication.  If you have questions I am available

Kind regards

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The subject of the work is interesting and up-to-date. It concerns the impact of food production on the environment. The origin of the variability of the environmental impact during the production of the ripened cheese, as identified in this paper, is not revealing. It is known that raw milk production and the maturation process are the main hotspots influencing most environmental indicators. Nevertheless, the multifactorial analysis of the two production variants (used in France) carried out by the authors, together with recommendations for stakeholders of small artisanal enterprises producing cheese with PDO, may be of practical value. However, the work of this nature requires a great precision in the description and presentation of the results to be useful for practitioners and scientists dealing with this subject of research in other countries. Below are some notes that need to be considered prior to publication.

1.   The title of the manuscript should be presenting a relevant problem, in the form of an affirmative sentence, not a question. I propose: Identifying the origin of the variability in the environmental impact of French artisan cheeses

2.   Abstract - The goal should be more specific. Its current version is too general and may not interest the reader at the first contact with the work. The last sentence should be extended with specific practical aspects (recommendations), e.g.:

Ø  enable producers to identify the origin of the variability in the environmental impact of cheese making

Ø  justify taking possible directions / activities of innovative development of production stages to improve efficiency and profitability,

Ø  help stakeholders to take environmental actions and decisions on the appropriateness of implementing an alternative scenario in the production of artisan cheeses, mainly involving off-site transportation of cheeses to a shared ripening facility.

3.   Keywords - do not fully reflect the topic of the work. Should be: Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), artisanal ripened cheeses, type of milk, energy-efficient ripening room, alternative scenario

4.   Introduction - there are no characteristics of the production practices used by individual craftsmen to indicate the validity of the analyzed scenarios, including the alternative one. No information is available on the environmental impact categories of industrial cheeses. Do recipients / retailers require product environmental reporting from their suppliers?

5.   The aim of the research - it should be specified in the final part of the literature, without repeating it again in chapter 2.1 "Purpose and scope". In addition, it should be consistently refined to the analyzed factors - according to the chapters discussed. Now it is a mess.

6.   Methodology

Ø  The first sentence in this chapter is trivial as the whole LCA procedure is defined according to ISO 14044. That is why chap. 2.1. can be entitled only as “scope of research”. In this chapter there are errors in the numbering of subsections (2.1.1 is missing),

Ø  In chap. 2.1.3. (functional unit) information on how to take into account the factor of variation - the moisture content of the cheeses should be placed. Provide a relevant conversion factor (can be partially found in chapter 2.2.2),

Ø  Which by-products from cheese manufacturing are included in the allocation?

Ø  A short description of obtaining data for calculations is necessary (from literature [11]) - AGRIBALYSE 3.0?

Ø  It could be recommended to include in the diagram (Fig. 1) the raw materials / processes / operations determining the value of environmental indicators, e.g. milk production - fertilizer production, feed, breeding, etc., or for transport - fuel type, means of transport, distance (important for the alternative scenario),

Ø  In this chapter a description of statistical calculations (PCA method) is missing,

Ø  Has the research included a normalization stage (per capita for the region)? This is an optional LCA phase according to ISO 14044, but it is a useful step in identifying impact categories for the industry under study (normalization is an effort to contextualize the emissions impacts, typically on a regional basis)

7.   Discussion of the results – the structure of chap. 3 (division into subchapters and their titles) "discussion of the results" is incorrect and inconsistent with generally accepted principles, therefore it requires correction and replacement of some content (details below):

Ø   the readability of the cheese production diagram (fig. 1) should be improved - enlarge the font,

Ø   From the content in chap. 3.1. and 3.2. I suggest to create one chap. 3.1. for the determination of the variability of the analyzed factors in the base scenario and to entitle it appropriately "Base scenario - analysis of production variability, identification of hotspots". There is no need to create chap. 3.1. and 3.2. for the same scenario,

Ø   Delete the titles from chap. 3.3.1; 2 and include only chap. 3.3. under the title " Alternative scenario - environmental impact, identification of hotspots". There is no subsection for one chart,

Ø   Change the title of chapter 3.4. according to the nomenclature used in the work, e.g. "Comparative analysis of the base and alternative scenarios",

Ø   Why was Brie de Melun selected to analyze the impact of the steps in cheese making? Is it representative of all cheeses? The choice of cheese has to be justified.,

Ø   Results from Chapters 3.5.1.1 and 3.5.1.2. should be included in chapter 3.1. (they relate to the baseline scenario),

Ø   In chap. 3.5, reference should be made to the standardized (according to the applied national and industry standards) ranges of protein and fat content for each type of cheese. Reducing the amount of milk in cheese production will not result in a high-quality product. Such practice is not difficult (line 453-454), but impossible  This requires clarification with regard to the production technology of the cheeses,

Ø   Instead of listing environmental impact categories, it would be better to highlight what they are caused by, e.g. ecotoxicity is dominated by electricity consumption. It will be more unambiguous for the reader,

Ø   There is lack of consistency in decisions and in discussing the results. In line 378-379, "Sheep milk cheeses were not included here since there were only two representatives," while in line 393, "Overall, sheep milk and goat milk have higher impacts than cow milk…." How it's possible? It sould be rewriiten.

8.   Discussion of the results should be deepened by comparing the obtained results with the results from other countries, e.g. European countries. There is also no explanation for the differentiated impact of the type of milk (cow, goat) and production technology on the environment. Why do goat’s milk cheese rather than cow's milk- cheese have a greater influence on environmental indicators? How will the identified environmental impact variability translate into the Eco-score, suggested and developed by France (in the context of the content of line 500-502)? Does this translate into consumer purchasing decisions?

 9.   Recommendations, and especially the Authors' statements "In the future, research that incorporates more of the existing variability in cheesemaking plants and equipment may help to better identify the options for reducing the environmental impact of cheese" (line 503-505) can be enriched with the answers to the following questions:

 What are the practical options for implementing alternative cheese maturation? How can this be achieved? What is the priority of reducing environmental impact? How can incremental improvements be made in all impact categories to reduce the consumption of electricity and fossil fuels? How can EU scientists / committees help small (artisanal) cheese plants with PDOs engage in sustainable practices and reduce environmental impacts? Are there any practices / solutions innovations that can be used in artisanal production?

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Title: How to explain the variability between environmental impacts of artisanally produced French PDO cheeses?

 Manuscript ID: sustainability-1804047

 Comments

The authors aim to provide a better understanding of the environmental performance of French PDO cheeses and identify possible means of improvement.

To address this, they compare the environmental performance of 44 French PDO cheeses, conduct a descriptive analysis of the differences among cheeses with respect to their environmental impacts; and identify the possible correlations between certain characteristics of cheese and its environmental impacts. This is an active research area and would be interesting to readers.

I enjoyed reading this article. The work is valuable and can be better highlighted by (1) a careful review of the grammar and phrasing of the manuscript (2) modifications and suggested additions to the manuscript, especially around the introduction and discussion with an intensive comparison of similar research (3) use of citations in the text with appropriate style.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf