An organisation that advocates for organic farming in Europe has expressed concern over how “green claims” for agri-food will be assessed.
The European Parliament is currently debating a Green Claims Directive, which will look to regulate the use of claims of environmental sustainability, and to prevent the use of such claims if they can’t be backed up scientifically.
However, the European branch of the IFOAM (formally known as the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements) has warned of “negative consequences” for the agri-food sector if the “wrong methodology” is chosen as a basis to assess claims on food products.
One possible methodology of judging these claims is the European Commission’s Product Environmental Footprint (PEF).
Eric Gall, the deputy director of IFOAM Organics Europe, said 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, 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,” he added.
According to Gall, the commission has itself acknowledged that the PEF methodology has limitations when it comes to assessing the impact of food products.
“It is difficult to understand that the parliament would open the door to greenwashing by calling for the use of PEF category rules for food products.”
IFOAM Organics Europe claimed that the PEF cannot be altered to make it more suitable for farming , and that entirely new metrics are needed.
The group also claimed that the PEF could lead to more intensification in agriculture, not less, and will increase pressure on farming practices, nature, animals, and farmer revenue.
‘Green claims’ law
The proposed Green Claims Directive is closely related to another legislative proposal that was adopted by a vote in the European Parliament last week.
The law adopted last week is designed to the work in tandem with the Green Claims Directive, which is currently at the committee stage in the parliament.
The Green Claims Directive will be more specific and will elaborate the conditions for using environmental claims in greater detail.
Under the law adopted last week, the use of general environmental claims such as “environmentally friendly”, “natural”, “biodegradable”, “climate neutral” or “eco” without proof will be banned.
The use of sustainability labels will also be regulated, only allowing the use of labels based on official certification schemes or established by public authorities.
Additionally, the law will ban claims that a product has a neutral, reduced or positive impact on the environment because of emissions offsetting schemes.