26/05/2023

Call for sponsors: Help support our new project on Sustainability Labelling for food

Join us as a sponsor of the IFOAM Organics Europe project on new Sustainability labelling and help us protect the organic sector from greenwashing.

With the project “Safeguarding organic from greenwashing labelling”, we strive to protect the organic sector from greenwashing attempts of non-organic industry & aim to ensure that the new EU Sustainability labelling framework (expected for September 2023) relies on a methodology that does not allow the display of labels, claims and information misleading for consumers and damaging for the organic label. With your support we can take this ambitious project one step closer to reality.

IFOAM Organics Europe recently managed to reduce the importance of the Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) methodology in the Substantiating Green Claim Directive which was published on the 22nd of March. But without further efforts, this success can be vane and still bring to damaging the reputation of organic food and label, with consequent loss of customers, attracted towards cheaper food products claimed as “more sustainable”.

Our project:

  • Court cases to protect the terms organic, ecologic, biological and their derivatives and diminutives such as ECO, BIO, and related translations, whether used alone or in combination, from their use on non-organic products (regarding the EU Organic Regulation) agricultural and food products whose production is not in compliance with the EU Organic Regulation.
  • Advocate towards the EU institutions to defend the interests of organic operators to make sure that the next Sustainability Labels are based on methodologies that showcase the benefits of organic to consumers and do not represent unfair competition for the organic logo and organic products.

Our vision:

  • Methodologies aiming at evaluating the environmental impact of agri-food products must be designed through a holistic approach, to inform consumers about the vision behind the production of a given food product. The PEF methodology is unfit for a label that aims to assess the sustainability impact of food products. It is based on a life-cycle assessment (LCA) that does not represent the complexity of current agri-food systems and leads to the underperformance of organic products compared to conventional. Example: eggs from conventional caged hens score as high as organic free-range eggs.
  • Current or future labels cannot contain the words ECO or BIO and derivatives because they are protected by the EU Organic Regulation to be used only on products certified organic (Regulation 2018/848, Article 30). Example: The label ECOSCORE, which rates the environmental impact of products on a five-step colour scale based on the PEF methodology, is currently used by some big European retailers and appears mostly in France and Belgium. Such labels undermine the European organic logo and its credibility towards European citizens and can mislead consumers’ choices.

Benefits for our sponsors:

  • You will enjoy a visibility package and be exposed in our channels (Newsletter: +3.700 recipients; Social media: +28.000 followers in total; website; mass mailings).
  • You will get exclusive first-hand information about the court-cases developments.
  • You will have a direct role in shaping the upcoming EU sustainability labelling framework and access to exclusive insights from the heart of the EU!
  • You will enjoy a visibility package and be exposed in our channels.

We need € 90.000 to start the project and € 120.000 to reach our objectives.

Are you thrilled by the challenge? Get in contact with [email protected] to have more information.

 
IFoam
I accept I do not accept