The press Conference on “Green claims: Product environmental footprint (PEF) method ill-suited for agri-food” was held online on 23 January 2024
Speakers:
– Eric Gall, Deputy Director at IFOAM Organics Europe
– Quentin Chancé, Coordinator of CESIAe, the Scientific Expert Group on Sustainability Labelling at CNRS
– Sabine Bonnot, Member of the scientific council at ITAB and President of PlanetScore
Further info on the programme and the speakers can be found on the event’s page: https://www.organicseurope.bio/events/online-press-conference-on-green-claims/
Lear more about sustainability labelling in our Position Paper https://www.organicseurope.bio/content/uploads/2022/09/IFOAMEU_policy_position-paper_sustainability-labelling_202209.pdf?dd
Check our website to dig deeper into all matters around Food Policies https://www.organicseurope.bio/what-we-do/food-policy/
Good morning everybody and welcome to this press conference uh on the topic of uh green claims uh there are many issues being debated uh in Brussels at the moment which are relevant for for agriculture and food production this week we have a launch of a long awaited strategic Dialogue on the
On the future of Agriculture on Thursday tomorrow we have a vote on the deregulation of Novel genomic techniques uh as well but there is another uh important piece of legislation which is being discussed and which will have quite some important impact on the future of Agriculture which is the
Substantiating green claims proposal it was presented by the commission last March uh it’s being uh uh processed in cision right now so there are ongoing discussions in the European in the European Parliament on the one hand and they are at the stage of negotiating compromise amendments with a vote uh
Scheduled for the 24th of uh February uh and there are also ongoing discussion on the council uh uh on this green claim legislation and the Belgian presidency aims at uh at uh reaching a common position uh by uh June uh so I’m Eric G deputy director at Organics Europe
Representing the organic food and farming movement um and the organic movement uh welcome the green claims proposal and and its intention to fight green washing and to provide more information to Consumers about the impact of whole their food is produced the concern that we have and that’s why
We organize this press conference today is that uh the reference methodology uh which could be inserted in the text precisely to assess the environmental impact of food products and which could be the basis for private or public labeling system a bit like the neutral score but for the environmental
Impact uh is a methodology based on life cycle assessment which is called the PF the product environmental footprint it’s a methodology that was actually designed by the European commission and the joint Research Center 10 years ago uh initially for industrial product manufactured product the problem is that when this methodology is applied to
Assess the impact of food products it basically uh it gives results which are uh absurd from a point of view and uh uh which completely ignore quite a number of impacts uh of different methods uh of Productions uh as well and uh there were quite a number of
Uh of alerts from the scientific community and from NOS about uh the fact that uh they should not be that the P method should not be made a reference in the substantiating green claims proposal and in the end the commission itself acknowledged the limitation of a PF to
Score agre food products so that’s why the commission proposal which was published last March uh includes clear statement about the fact that uh the PF methodology is ill suited to assess the performance of food products yet what we see now in the negotiations in the
Parliament is the return of a PF and we see that in some compromise amendments uh there are some reference being proposed to so-called PF category rules uh and this is the concerned and this is why we’ve invited uh two experts uh that will explain to you what are the
Problems uh uh with the pth methodology and their limitations and let me just be clear on the fact that there is a lot at stake with this methodology with this methodology it’s not mainly a technical issue uh it will B basically uh um provide a basis for telling consumers
Which products are good for the environment or not and telling producers how they should adapt their farming practices to uh improve their impact uh on the environment as well so if we have a methodology like the P which by construct and by Design gives the best scores to product from intensive farming
And the worst scores to product from extensive farming farming and organic agriculture uh this is will be in complete contradiction with the objectives of a green deal and of a farm to Fork strategy ecology so we have with us today uh two experts uh that will who will explain
The limitation of the PF methodology um I hope you can still see us yes uh and why do we have expert from France uh because uh we are this debate on sustainability labeling and which methodology should underpin the labeling of uh of impact of environmental impact of food products is
Also happening at the national level and the debate is more advanced in France because the French government in its climate and resilience law from 2021 precisely um made it clear that the French government will adopt a national law uh aimed at providing more information to to Consumers about the
Environmental impact of food products and launched an experiment to test different methodologies on how to build this environmental scoring and how to convey the information uh to Consumers uh as well so that’s why the debate has been uh uh rather intense in friends in the
Last two years on this topic so we have with us uh today k shance uh K thank you for being with us K is a researcher um a sociologist uh attached to a laboratory from The in France we ech uh and uh K is also part of a group of researchers uh who have been precisely looking uh at the methodologies like classical assessments and the product environmental footprint and their relevance or not to assess the scoring of uh of food products in the
Context of a French debate and then we will hear as well from Sabin Bono Sabin Bono is a member of iTab which is the French uh Technical Institute for organic farming and which is also the one that has developed together with organ ation from Civil Society uh uh a
Labeling initiative called the planet score which is part of experiment uh ongoing in France testing different system for the for the scoring of food products as well so without further Ado uh I will give the floor to uh K uh for uh a few words about the report
That uh this group of researchers has released uh on the LCA and the path okay the floor is yours yes do you hear me well yes okay uh thank you for cannot hear you you cannot hear me it’s because you turned off um speakers a little bit of technical
Details now you can hear me yes okay perfect so first thank you for the invitation on this uh important topic uh my presentation for five minutes is in three points who is speaking to know uh from where com message uh what is the problem and the pronation of our
Uh scientific group so cont sociologist specialized in farming sector and coordinated for C the scientific expert group on sustainability leveling just one word about this uh this uh research committee uh so in France there was this project of aish environmental and when which is equivalent to Green claims when
The first figures coming from the P methodology came out there a different uh social organization consumer organization environmental organization in France who react and wanted to better understand why the figures uh promotes intensification so one of them consumer organization we have cush here ask the ministry to have an independent scientific expertise they
Send curriculum V and they say okay to do that soier was born uh it’s an interdisciplinary committee linking five researchers in Agronomy ecology geography and sociology and uh coordinated with scientific committee whose propos is to study the process and content of tools that assess uh impact on the environment
Al so what is the problem and why we are here just did the slide to put the context and better understand why it’s not so easy to develop uh uh an assessment of the environmental impact so we start from a natur society issue uh mainly we tend to destroy the environment so it
Becames uh a problem we care about the environment so from this problem we’ve got green claims which are things written on the stuff we buy who tells us this products ecologic sustainable green natur friendly and it gets a political program called Green claims because we don’t
Know if it’s green rushing or not and we need to prove this green claims to avoid to uh to avoid to spread for information and not doing the right thing to for the habitability of the planet so the idea has been to create an evaluation tool to assess the environmental impacts so
Going from words to figures to explain the problem uh so there’s the the the this project the CH there’s numerous possibilities to do that there thousands of way to create an indicators in a sociology of quantification we know that creating an evolution tools is not uh describing
Reality is already there it’s part of a process that’s uh as to Define what we evaluate or do we Define what we evaluate what are the political choice about what we care about and the assessment or do you write the different factors what kind of conceptual
Framework we use to define the object to assess so all these things are wrapped up in the an evaluation tools and from all the possibility what the European commission and also in France uh government choose they choose the life cycle analysis framework called Product environmental footprint who is
An application of LCA to the evaluation of environmental impact the issue is that this method the path is irrelevant for farming uh and to understand that you have two ways of doing it first one you look at the figures this methodology produce when you compare the figures with the
Reality this is mainly what the environmental Association did the one I cited in the first slide and it see also what the ecology and economic science do when they go on the field and they evaluate the B diversity the environment and they try to catch an agronomic system for reality with different
Parameters to Define it when we do that you realize that promoting intensification is not the best way to uh prevent environmental problem the other uh possibilities is the one we did in the C report is to open the Black Box open the evaluation tools look inside
And try to understand what has been used Services what is on the just here the pth methodology is based on the LCR framework LCR framework is a a research committee dedicated to life cycle analysis and Market communities who uh create assessments the uh approach the ctive framework of an LC analysis is
Reductionist which is different than systemic thinking that is the thing we promote in Agronomy and ecology so it leads to uh this reductionist approach to the issues presented here it promotes intensifications it avoids core issues such as pestic biodiversities or nitrogen cycles and it invisible uh the effects of diffused pollution so scientifically
Speaking uh the path is not relevant to make an assessment tools that respond to the goal of the political program and socially it’s not responsible because it promotes system we know empirically their that good from environment next slide uh so what are C pronation uh for food labeling we advise
To use more of agronomical and ecological scientific knowledge to develop assessment tools like I tried to show on these pictures science is a big uh big big arena with different communities and you can use the tools from the LCI Community but I I show here it’s reductionist approach so there’s
Problem using that but it could be interesting to use all the knowledge we produce in ecology Agronomy and sociology to promote a systemic approach to create an assessment environmental who is needed for agriculture specifically and final Point uh recommendation the product en environmental footprint has been developed to assess all the economic
Sectors and we see it’s not relevant for agriculture due to reductionist approach so different possibility if one possibility will be to create a specificity for agriculture by not using the pth for this sector we could reduce signific significatively the use of the P for the agricultural sector and mainly
Mobilized systemic approach or in any case could uh sorry uh we should allow independent assessment in laink but are sector but specific two agricultural sector for examples such as plesco in the regulatory framework with public approval and recognition that would be necessary to have different kind of assessment
Methodology to exist and particularly to fit with uh the specific agriculture uh so to conclude the report published by the cza on November 2023 demonstrate that the PS uh life cycle analysis method through useful in some context is fundamentally United for agre food products its reductionist approach fails to capture
The complex interactions in agriculture leading to skewed environmental ass assessment it is not a question of fixing or patching the path for farming there is a clear need for all the metrics so we advocate for more comprehensive methodologies that accurately reflect the unique challenges and impacts of the Agricultural sector
Recognizing the need for a divers Sur way assessment tools to truly reflect and drive environmental sustain sustainability thank you yeah thank you very much uh k for explaining very clearly in this introduction the limitation of a PF and the fact that the PF is IR relevant for farming because it’s enable like you
Said uh to uh catch all the complexities uh of farming system and it ignores largely some impacts on biodiversity or linked to the use of pesticides which are precisely some uh uh some of the aspects where uh extensive farming system and organic agriculture has the most benefits uh as well but they are
Not uh largely ignored by the pep as well we will open the floor for question later but first we will hear more about the limitation of a p from Sabin Bono uh who as I said is a member of of iTab in France and was contributed to developing
The the planet score which shows which is another methodology which shows that it is possible uh to have methodologies that do not uh uh uh rely solely on on life cycle analysis so Sabine the floor is yours savine we don’t have sorry the mic was off I guess uh
Thank you very much for the invitation uh I guess the main part was uh made clearly by cont shance PF is not science and that it’s really worrying to see that this method could come back uh on the on the stage uh PF methodology is not science and that’s written very
Clearly in other reports it report in 2021 C report November uh 23 but also in the the own uh report by commission St C in 2018 it states any waiting system uh as in any waiting system sorry PF is not mainly natural science-based but inherently involves value choices that
Will depend on policy cultural and other preferences and value systems there is no consensus on waiting seems to be uh that seems to be achievable uh so that’s in the technical report by the DRC and we’ve had many discussions with the Commission in the last two years about this fact for
Farming um in March last year when releasing the draft of the green claim proposal uh the commission declared before the press that it had learned from the lessons of developing the path over 10 years and that considering its structural flows especially for food fish and textile sectors which are cited
In the in the proposal it was not adequate to take this apprach approach as a unique or Central reference and instead the commission established a list of conditions in article 8 to be respected by independent methodologies to ensure reliability transparency and affordability especially for small and medium Enterprises so PF compliance is
Not on the list established by the Commission in this article last year we’ve also add another uh report uh lately in October by the French Ministry of Agriculture stating looking at the the ecological labeling that the the ministry Mission considers that it would have been preferable to set the course
For food and agroecological transitions before working on environmental labeling meaning that the vision and where we want to go collectively for farming should be stated first and they state that scores are on tools for achieving the objectives set by public policy and that everything should be done to ensure the consistency with
Public policy objectives so that’s a huge point because with reductionist approaches there is no way we can do that so yes PF is not suitable for farming so I would just put a few examples um here the bigger is the number these are PF numbers the bigger ger is the number and the
Worst is reputedly is the system on the environment or the product so as you see here clearly Freer range Farmers free range products are not good according to the pth same for uh chickens by far they are not good for the envir environment if they free range
Uh same for this type of pork production as you see the PF is just clearly in favor of more industrial uh systems same for fruits vegetables cereals Etc and uh if you have to choose between Meats then you will have to clearly go on the left hand side for according to
The pth so as a contal said it’s not a question of patching or fixing that methodology for farming it’s okay for other sectors but not for farming and this is really what’s in the path uh lamb should be the ultimate ecological disaster uh so is that trustworthy for farming we really think
Scientifically and societally it is not uh and as you see this is just an example of one scheme which is named ecoscore um and which uses PF as a a lab labeling methodology so the value choices behind the PF uh it’s really the ultimate reductionist tool thinking primarily in
Terms of efficiency and that’s okay that’s suitable for nuts and bolts factories these are industrial goods this is not okay for farming and living systems unless we really want to believe that caged hands are the best egg producing system for the environment onment or that the ultimate um ecological disaster would be extensive
LMS on European permanent pastures uh and that would be far worse than any imported fruits vegetables or even poultry these would be really questionable value choices and these are choices by the pth systemic approaches are really needed and the value choices behind the pth are wrong for farming are they
Promote still more intensive ification more pressures more pressure on farming practices on nature cont told about what we can really see empirically and we have to get tools that really reflect what’s going on in nature and in the fields it’s still more pressure on animals and on Farmers revenues so
That’s just more of the same story that has been crushing farmers and pushing them into desperate actions as we see currently bef is not a consumer transpar transparency nor an ecodesign tool for food products it is unable to find against grein washing it is unable to reflect farmers and producers efforts so
It could destroy again lots of value for farmers and very briefly other metrics are possible and we’ve proven that um I’m not going to get into methodology but we’re we are using part of some of the PF indicators only 12 of them uh and having a much more complete uh 25
Indicator systemic approach uh to render a global systemic picture uh PF is a minor part of Planet score assessment Tool uh Planet score is currently being developed along this line of article8 in the directive with obvious real life relevance for more than 300 companies currently assessing their their products
Food products in 12 countries across Europe it is scalable it is concrete for Farmers we’re working with farmers and cooperatives it’s aligned with public ecological policies for our sector it’s been um scaled up in the biggest french consumer Association on more than 130,000 products food products
It is in supermarkets it is also uh in digital website as you see it Compares quite clearly food products between each other it’s also unpack uh for more than 80 Brands and companies right now and upscaling quite quickly this is also unpack so that’s really quite a thrill
At the moment and as you see that’s a way to really differentiate products and not according to intensification but to real a systemic impact so these are just a few example with pasta and pizza scaling up here uh and so just to conclude that other metrics are possible and surveys
Reveal that in many European countries consumers do not trust companies nor public authorities so that should be collectively a big concern uh when it relates to ecological topics we really need to build things that are um okay for NOS okay for Consumer associations and okay for scientists and to build
Trust there is a strong need for methodologies which are relevant independent and endorsed by Civil Society scientists consumer Association NGS the drive directive makes this framework a reality through article8 and this is a huge step towards Innovative and Cooperative Ways to Think to make a transition happen so this is just uh one
Survey which has been presented at the French Parliament early last year uh trust has to be built collectively otherwise this is going to be again a tool that’s not going to be okay for consumers uh and last thing when trust is lacking this is what happens currently for carbon credit
Uh it works one two three years and then it crashes and we can’t put energy and money uh as Farmers as companies in s something that’s going to crash on the wall of reality thank you very much thank you very much Sabine so uh to
Sum it up to be very clear uh if uh the P methodology was set up as the reference methodology also to assess the environmental impact of food products in the green claims proposal that would be a disaster and that would be in complete contradiction with the objectives of a
Farm through for strategy to have a reduction of pesticides uh uh in in Europe to have a reduction of the use of synthetic fertilizers and to improve uh the the the protection of biodiversity which is also in the EU biodiversity strategy Lao speakers have said very clearly no methodology is neutral and
Clearly with a methodology like the PF uh you’re basically telling consumers and producers uh that you need to further intensify agriculture uh uh in Europe uh as well uh and like it was said as well it’s not a matter of fixing the path uh when you use functional unit and you
Measure impacts by kilograms of carrot that you produce by Design you automatically have a methodology that the best scores uh uh to systems which yield the most but at the same time which disregard the impact of the inputs that are used and the impact on biodiversity as well uh I think we can
Now open the floor um to questions yes