EU braces for ban on unverified eco-claims as concerns grow over greenwashing and intensive farming

24 Jan 2024 --- EU Parliament has given its final green light to the Green Claims Directive that will ultimately ban the use of “misleading” environmental claims across food sold in Europe. With expectations that all green claims on products may soon require adherence to established Product Environment Footprint (PEF) calculations, the organic sector argues these rules represent only a “minor component” in a holistic evaluation — with some cautioning it will only boost intensive agriculture.

With this new directive, European MPs are zeroing in on sustainability labels, causing “confusion by their proliferation” as well as companies’ “failure to use comparative data” in marketing their products, they claim.

In the future, only sustainability labels based on official EU-sanctioned certification schemes or established by public authorities will be allowed in the Single Market under these new rules.

Additionally, the directive will ban claims that a food product has a “neutral,” “reduced” or “positive” impact on the environment because of emissions offsetting schemes — such as forestry, waste management and carbon sequestration.

The new rules have been laid out to make product labeling “clearer and more trustworthy,” intended to prevent companies from using general environmental claims like “environmentally friendly,” “natural,” “biodegradable,” “climate neutral” or “eco” without valid proof.

Representatives of European food manufacturers under FoodDrinkEurope voiced support for the development of such an “EU-harmonized framework,” which lays out the minimum requirements for voluntarily disclosed environmental information.

However, the coalition believes the current proposal needs a feasible transition period for traders and processors to adjust existing claims to new requirements. It is expected to come into force in 2026.

“We recommend a 36-month transition period after the entry into force of the legislation,” Rafael Sampson, public affairs and public relations manager at FoodDrinkEurope, tells Food Ingredients First.

“Another flaw is the lack of support for small businesses. Around 99% of the European food and drink industry is composed of small businesses, and as such, we encourage policymakers to build mechanisms that support these companies in accessing the legislation, particularly in the development and application of PEF category rules.”

Policymakers should provide small business access to the databases needed to make PEF calculations free of charge, he argues, adding that the EU rules should be “harmonized to avoid fragmentation of the Single Market.”

“This means that the legislation should prevent divergent interpretations or procedures from being established across Member States and verifying bodies,” he underscores. 

“The Green Claims proposal should define the minimum requirements for the procedures to be implemented by the Member States in order to ensure best results across Europe.”

In the future, only sustainability labels based on official EU-sanctioned certification schemes will be allowed in the Single Market.Avoiding the “wrong methodology”
In early 2023, the European Commission first presented the Green Claims Directive to put environmental claims in check, proposing that green claims made on products must follow the PEF calculation method.

The proposed PEF is based on the scientific method for measuring environmental footprints called Life Cycle Assessments.

However, while amendment negotiations on the proposal are ongoing in the European Parliament, the organic food movement warns MEPs of “negative consequences” for the agri-food sector if the “wrong methodology is chosen as a basis to assess green claims on food products.”

Speaking at an online press conference yesterday, which Food Ingredients First attended, Eric Gall, deputy director of IFOAM Organics Europe, commented: “MEPs should avoid including as a reference to assess green claims an indicator like the PEF that points to the wrong direction for agriculture and which is irrelevant for farming.”

While the PEF may work well for manufactured goods, IFOAM argues it is “ill-suited” to assess the environmental impact of agri-food products.

“By design, the PEF calculation method disregards the impacts of different production methods on biodiversity and promotes intensive agriculture, not a transition of the current food system toward agroecological practices,” Gall remarked.

He added that the Commission’s proposal itself “acknowledges that the PEF methodology has limitations when it comes to assessing the impact of food products” and that it “would be difficult to understand that Parliament would open the door to greenwashing by calling for the use of PEF category rules also for food products.”

Trouble with keeping score
Sabine Bonnot, president of the widely used Planet-score — which itself is partly based on PEF — attended IFOAM’s roundtable discussions and also flagged concerns about the proposed calculation method.

“PEF is a minor part of the holistic ecological assessment,” she stresses. “And the French government itself is currently developing a method that is not PEF-compliant.”

She also warns: “PEF is the ultimate reductionist tool: thinking primarily in terms of efficiency is suitable for nuts and bolts factories, not farming systems. Unless we really want to believe that caged hens are the best egg-producing system, ecology-wise. This would be questionable value choices.”

“The value choices behind the PEF are wrong for farming, as they promote (according to all the afore-mentioned reports) more intensification, more pressure on farming practices, on nature, on animals and farmers revenues, more of the same story that has been crushing farmers and pushing them into desperate actions.”

Bonnot concludes by emphasizing: “PEF is not a consumer transparency nor an eco-design tool for food products. It is unable to fight against greenwashing and to reflect farmers’ and producers’ efforts.”

By Benjamin Ferrer