What logo's do you know?

Walk through any European supermarket and almost every package carries a label of some kind. In that thicket of logos it can be hard to tell which ones rest on rigorous, independent checks, which are a green-looking decoration, and which are simply greenwashing.
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This page covers the most important food labels, so you know what to look for.
​For each one we looked at three things: what it covers, who wrote the standard behind it, and, most important of all, who checks that the rules are actually followed.

Scroll down to go through them one by one, or click a logo below to jump straight to it.
Want to see what label to look for the topic that matters most to you? Find an overview here

And that thicket of sustainable-looking labels?
​The European Union has tightened the rules on what may appear on a pack, which should make genuine effort easier to recognize. You'll find more about that at the bottom of the page.

Logo's to look out for

1. How it was grown: organic

The EU 12-star leaf

more on the organic logo

check TRACES - the certification database

what does it cover?

How the crop was grown. No synthetic pesticides, no synthetic fertilizers, no GMOs, and a documented trail from the field to the pack. Worth reading precisely: synthetic is the operative word, and a short list of approved natural substances stays permitted.
On processed food, at least 95% of the agricultural ingredients have to be organic, and the same ingredient cannot appear in both organic and non-organic form in one product.
What it stays silent about: working conditions, carbon footprint, packaging, and how far the product traveled. An organic avocado flown across an ocean still carries this leaf.

who wrote the standard?

The European Union. This is the only organic mark on your groceries with the force of law behind it, set out in Regulation (EU) 2018/848 and identical in all twenty seven member states.
​Which also means it is compulsory. Wherever the words organic, bio or eco appear on prepackaged food produced in the EU, this leaf has to be there, and a product calling itself organic without it is making a claim it is not allowed to make.
The reverse does not hold. On organic products imported from outside the EU the logo is optional, so its absence tells you less than its presence does.

who checks compliance?

An approved control body, at least once a year, with unannounced visits on top. Those bodies are themselves supervised by the state.
The code printed beside the leaf tells you which one, and the line directly below it names where the raw materials were grown.

​NB - Everything in the next four blocks builds on this one. A Demeter, Bioland, Naturland or EKO product always carries this leaf as well.

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Demeter

read the Demeter standard

what does it cover?

The whole farm as a living system. Biodynamic growing treats a farm as a self contained organism: livestock is part of the design rather than a separate branch, cattle keep their horns, and growers apply preparations made from herbs and minerals to feed soil life. Conversion covers the whole farm, not a portion of it.
Everything in the EU organic block applies here first, and Demeter adds to it. No genetic modification of any kind, with biodynamic seed. In processing the standard works as a positive list, so only expressly named methods, aids and additives are allowed. Since January 2024 it also carries minimum social requirements, which few organic labels do.
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What it stays silent about: carbon footprint and distance. Demeter certifies bananas, and those bananas crossed an ocean.

who wrote the standard?

A private international federation, and the oldest one in the field. The approach goes back to lectures given by Rudolf Steiner in 1924 and is rooted in anthroposophy, which is also the part of biodynamics that draws the most debate.
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The trademark was registered in 1928, making it the first ecological label for organically produced food. The standard is published by the Biodynamic Federation Demeter International, and national organizations may add stricter requirements, never looser ones.

who checks compliance?

Two layers, annually. The farm is inspected against EU organic rules by the state approved control body, and separately reviewed against the Demeter standard by the certifying organization in its country. Certification has to be renewed every year.

NB - One name, many countries. Demeter is the only one of the private organic standards that travels, which is why you find it on Dutch, German, Italian and Spanish produce alike.

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Bioland

what Bioland stands for (German)

what does it cover?

Organic farming kept close to home. Bioland builds on EU organic rules and adds stricter ones, with binding requirements for biodiversity, soil fertility and animal husbandry. Conversion covers the whole farm, not a portion of it. Farms work in closed cycles where they can: at least half the feed comes from the farm itself or a partner farm, and none of it from rainforest regions. No genetically modified seed or feed.
Animal welfare carries more weight here than in most organic standards. Cattle graze or have year-round outdoor access wherever possible, and laying hens and pigs get space to behave like animals rather than stock.
What it stays silent about: working conditions. Bioland takes positions on farm policy and rural livelihoods, which is advocacy rather than an audited requirement.

who wrote the standard?

A German growers' association, founded in 1971 and now the largest of its kind by membership, covering farms, beekeepers and winegrowers along with processing and trade partners.
Membership is geographically limited on purpose. Only producers in Germany and South Tyrol can carry the mark, which is a deliberate stance on regional supply chains rather than an administrative detail. The South Tyrolean branch was started in 1991 by ten fruit growers, which is why the label turns up so often on apples.

who checks compliance?

At least once a year, by an independent state approved control body, against the EU organic rules and the Bioland guidelines in the same inspection. Random additional checks happen on top, and every livestock farm gets a mandatory annual animal welfare inspection carried out by trained specialists.

NB - One of the few labels that tells you where. If a product carries this mark, it was grown in Germany or South Tyrol. Most certification describes how food was grown and says nothing about how far it traveled.

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Naturland

Read the Naturland standards

what does it cover?

Organic farming with people written into the standard. Naturland builds on EU organic rules, requires full farm conversion, and then goes into territory the EU regulation does not cover at all, including social responsibility, sustainable capture fishery and organic forest management.
Social standards have been binding for members worldwide since 2005, when Naturland became the first organic association to introduce them. They rest on the UN human rights declaration, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the ILO core standards, covering freedom of association, children's rights, health and safety, and terms of employment. Compliance has been verified annually since 2016. A separate Naturland Fair certification adds fair prices and reliable trade relations on top.
What it stays silent about: carbon footprint and distance. Naturland certifies coffee, cocoa and tropical produce, and those travel.

who wrote the standard?

A German association that works internationally, founded in 1982 and the youngest of the three associations here, which is part of why it staked out ground the others had left open. Changes to the standards have to be enacted by the Assembly of Delegates, so the members themselves decide what the label requires.
This is the one association here designed to travel. The same requirements apply to a Bavarian dairy farm and a Ugandan coffee cooperative, and it is the mark you are most likely to meet on imported goods.

who checks compliance?

Annually, in two steps. An approved independent inspection body verifies compliance on the farm, and the Naturland certification committee then reviews the results and takes the certification decision. Every certified farm and processor has to show evidence of that annual inspection.

NB - The label to look for if working conditions are your deciding factor. Among the organic marks on this page, Naturland is the one that treats people as part of the standard rather than a separate concern.

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EKO

EKO requirements per sector (Dutch)

How EKO is controlled

what does it cover?

Dutch organic, with extra ambitions set per sector. EKO builds on EU organic rules and adds requirements that each branch of farming works out for itself, on the reasoning that a pig farm is not a dairy farm and arable is not greenhouse growing. For field vegetables that means resting crops on at least 30% of the land; in greenhouses it means all electricity from renewable sources. Social standards and transparency toward consumers apply across the board.
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The stars are about origin, not quality. Three stars means 90 to 100% Dutch organic ingredients, two stars 60 to 90%, one star 30 to 60%. Single ingredient products like fruit, vegetables, milk and meat always carry three stars, because they only qualify when they are Dutch. Which is why you will not find this mark on exotic fruit, coffee or tea.

who wrote the standard?

A Dutch foundation, with the requirements developed by groups of farmers and companies per sector rather than written centrally. EKO's own framing is that the farmers know best how to make their own operation more sustainable.

who checks compliance?

Partly, and EKO says so plainly. The underlying EU organic rules are inspected by Skal, the Dutch control body. Skal also runs the mass balance check on trade and processing companies, which is what guarantees the percentage behind the stars.
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The extra requirements are a different story. For organic dairy they are checked by Q-Lip. For the remaining EKO farmers, including arable and vegetable growers, the standard describes development ambitions that are not yet inspected.

NB - ​Read the stars as a statement about origin. On a Dutch cucumber the mark tells you it was grown here to organic rules with ambitions on top, and that the ambitions themselves are still on trust.

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2. How it was grown: better, not organic

On the way to PlanetProof

How Planet Proof is inspected

what does it cover?

Environmental impact of conventional farming. This is the first label on the page that is not organic. Synthetic crop protection is restricted rather than banned, and that restriction is the heart of the scheme: substances on one list are prohibited outright, while substances on a second list, where no environmentally friendlier alternative exists, earn penalty points a grower has to offset by scoring points on optional measures elsewhere.
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The revised scheme for plant products took effect on January 1, 2026, built around healthy soils, rich biodiversity, cleaner water and fewer hazardous substances in the environment.
What it stays silent about: this is not a route to organic produce. A PlanetProof cucumber was grown conventionally, with real limits on what went onto it.

who wrote the standard?

An independent non-profit. SMK develops and manages the scheme, and its content is set by a Board of Experts after open consultation, with anyone able to submit proposals for revision.
It grew out of Milieukeur, a Dutch scheme dating from 1992, and was renamed in 2018. More than sixty percent of Dutch supermarkets have committed to it for their Dutch potatoes, vegetables and fruit, which means many shoppers buy it without ever choosing it.

who checks compliance?

Accredited independent certification bodies, roughly once a year, with an inspection before the first certificate is issued. SMK writes the requirements and never audits against them: that separation between development and testing is required by the Dutch Accreditation Council to prevent conflicts of interest.
Certificates can be withdrawn. Depending on how serious a shortcoming is, a holder gets time to fix it or loses the certificate.

NB - Certified growers receive a sustainability fee on top of the price, recalculated by an independent research agency, and SMK has secured the right to verify with supermarkets whether it actually reaches them.

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the GGN label

what the GGN label stands for

trace a product by its number

what does it cover?

Responsible farming across categories, with a traceable origin. Food safety, environmental protection, animal welfare, workers' health, safety and welfare, and transparency through the supply chain. You will find it on fruit and vegetables, farmed seafood, flowers and plants: more than four thousand products in forty-five countries.
Behind the label sits a certificate most shoppers have never heard of, called GLOBALG.A.P., which is the subject of the next section. Every link in the chain needs it before the label can go on a pack, along with full compliance with a labor module called GRASP and monitored residue levels.
What it stays silent about: organic growing and what the farmer was paid. It is a baseline for responsible farming, not a premium.

who wrote the standard?

The body behind that certificate, a German organization now called Agraya, formerly FoodPLUS. The standard and the label are separate brands under the same owner, and a farm with a valid certificate still needs a separate licence before it can use the label.
The label started with farmed seafood in 2016 and flowers in 2017, and became a single cross-category label covering fruit and vegetables in spring 2021.

who checks compliance?

Accredited independent certification bodies, in an annual audit of the underlying certificate.
And then there is the check you can run yourself. Every labelled product carries a unique thirteen-digit code. Enter it in the GGN label portal and you get the profile of the farm it came from, along with the processors and packers in between.

NB - No other label puts the evidence in your hand. Elsewhere you look up a company or a product name. Here the code on your specific pack leads to the farm that grew it.

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GLOBALG.A.P. and GRASP

what GLOBALG.A.P. requires

the GRASP module

what does it cover?

The entry ticket to the supermarket shelf. The Integrated Farm Assurance standard for fresh fruit and vegetables covers more than six hundred species, with requirements on food safety, traceability, environmental impact, worker health and safety, and animal welfare. Since the 2024 revision there is more on biodiversity and water use, and on continuous improvement: a farm has to show what it plans to do better and how it measures progress.
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GRASP is a separate module bolted on top, and it covers one thing: labor. Working conditions, pay levels, health and safety, and whether the operation is a decent employer. It is voluntary, and retailers increasingly require it anyway. A farm carrying the GGN label has to comply with it in full.
What it stays silent about: you, the shopper. There is no consumer claim attached. This certificate speaks to buyers, and the GGN label above is the only part of it that ever reaches a shelf.

who wrote the standard?

European supermarkets. In 1996, amid concern about pesticide residues on fresh produce and a food sector shaken by the BSE crisis, a group of retailers led by British chains and continental supermarkets decided to stop each running their own supplier rules and harmonize them into one certification system.
That became EurepGAP, the Euro-Retailer Produce Working Group standard, founded in 1997. FoodPLUS GmbH became the legal owner in 2001, the name changed to GLOBALG.A.P. in 2007 to match its reach, and in 2025 the owner rebranded as Agraya.
Membership now includes producers alongside retailers, but the origin explains the character of the thing. It exists because buyers wanted one set of rules, which is why food safety and traceability carry more weight here than, say, what the grower earns.

who checks compliance?

Accredited independent certification bodies, in an annual audit of the underlying certificate.
And then there is the check you can run yourself. Every labelled product carries a unique thirteen-digit code. Enter it in the GGN label portal and you get the profile of the farm it came from, along with the processors and packers in between.

NB - More than 195,000 producers in over 135 countries, and 4.8 million hectares of plant production. The most widely used standard on this page, and the one you have never seen.

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3. How the animal lived

Animal wellfare labels

how Beter Leven is controlled (Dutch)

Haltungsform and the state label explained (German)

what does it cover?

How the animal lived. For meat, dairy and eggs this is the question most shoppers actually want answered, and it is the one the labels above only touch on. The Dutch Beter Leven label, from the animal protection society Dierenbescherming, answers it in steps: one, two or three stars, each asking more in space, outdoor access and care. No star means nothing can be guaranteed about the animal's welfare. Organic meat automatically meets the three-star level.
The requirements are drawn up by the society's own animal welfare experts on the basis of scientific knowledge. Since 2019 the label also appears on dairy, not only meat and eggs.
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What it stays silent about: most of the environment. One star in particular sets no environmental requirements at all, which is why only the three-star version made Milieu Centraal's 2025 list of thirteen most ambitious labels.

who wrote the standard?

An animal protection organization, not the industry. Dierenbescherming founded the label in 2007 as an independent, non-profit welfare label. It earns nothing from it; the society pays for developing the criteria and promoting the label, and has handed the running of it to a separate foundation.
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Germany shows the other model side by side. The widely used Haltungsform label is a voluntary scheme run by the supermarkets themselves, in five steps since July 2024, and only from step three onward do conditions improve clearly.
​Next to it comes a mandatory state label for fresh German pork, law since 2023 and now expected to apply from January 2027. Same five steps, two different authors: in one case the retailers write the rules, in the other the government does.

who checks compliance?

Accredited certification bodies, annually, with unannounced visits on top. For Beter Leven, the foundation works with five certification bodies, all ISO 17065 accredited by the Dutch Accreditation Council, which in turn reviews them each year. They check farms and slaughterhouses on welfare, and trace products back through processors and supermarkets to make sure what carries stars came from animals that earned them. Participating farms abroad, in Belgium, Germany, France and Poland, are checked the same way. Serious violations mean the label is withdrawn.
One detail worth knowing: the farm chooses which certification body inspects it.

NB -  Read the number, not the logo. A one-star product and a three-star product carry the same label, with very different lives behind them. The same goes for Haltungsform: step one is the legal minimum, painted in a friendly color.

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the MSC label

how MSC certification works

the case for and against it

what does it cover?

Wild-caught fish and seafood. The standard rests on three principles: fish only in a way that can continue indefinitely without depleting the stock, keep the wider ecosystem productive, and follow all local, national and international law. The blue fish can only go on a product if every company between boat and plate is certified for traceability as well, so the label on a tin of tuna says something about the whole chain.
That traceability has measurable effect. DNA testing has brought species mislabelling on MSC products below one percent, against a sector average of roughly thirty.
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What it stays silent about: farmed fish, which has its own label, the people on board, and the fish itself. How an animal is caught or killed is not what MSC measures.

who wrote the standard?

The Marine Stewardship Council, an independent non-profit that started as a partnership. WWF and Unilever, then one of the world's largest buyers of frozen fish, set it up in 1997, a few years after the collapse of the cod fishery off Canada's Grand Banks cost some 35,000 jobs. MSC has been independent since 1999 and reviews its standard every five years.

who checks compliance?

Accredited certification bodies, hired and paid by the fishery itself. MSC deliberately does not assess fisheries, to avoid a conflict of interest, and the certifiers are accredited by Accreditation Services International. A certificate runs five years, with annual audits in between, and anyone can object to a proposed certification.
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This is also where the criticism concentrates. WWF, one of the founders, has raised concerns about the independence of certifiers in some cases, and researchers reviewing formal objections found that certifiers and adjudicators tend to read the principles generously in favor of certification. Individual decisions have drawn fire, while others show the system working: the Gulf of Maine lobster fishery lost its certificate over interactions with endangered North Atlantic right whales.

NB -  The fishery chooses and pays its own auditor. That model is common on this page, and MSC is where its weak spot has been documented most publicly. Worth knowing when you read "independently certified".

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the ASC label

what ASC requires

read the audit reports

what does it cover?

Farmed fish and seafood: salmon, shrimp, pangasius, mussels and more. Where MSC looks at the catch, ASC looks at the farm, and a farm raises different questions: water quality around the pens, escapes that could threaten wild populations, the feed the fish eat, disease and medicine use, and the effect on local biodiversity. The standards are organized around seven principles and are moving from separate rules per species toward one overarching Farm Standard.
Unlike MSC, ASC includes the people who do the work. Worker and community rights are built in, based on the core ILO conventions on child labor, forced labor, discrimination, health and safety, working hours and pay.
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What it stays silent about: organic farming. ASC fish can be raised on conventional feed and treated with conventional medicine within the limits set by the standard.

who wrote the standard?

The Aquaculture Stewardship Council, an independent non-profit with Dutch roots. ASC was founded in 2010 by WWF Netherlands and IDH, the Dutch Sustainable Trade Initiative, building on a series of Aquaculture Dialogues that brought farmers, scientists and NGOs together to agree what responsible fish farming should mean.
Standards are set according to the ISEAL code for credible sustainability systems, which requires open and transparent standard setting.

who checks compliance?

Accredited certification bodies, and ASC stays out of the decision. Only certification bodies accredited for ASC may audit a farm, and as scheme owner ASC plays no part in the audit or the certification decision. The auditors themselves are assessed by Assurance Services International, the same body that oversees MSC's certifiers.
And then the part that stands out: all findings, audit reports and certificates are published on the ASC website. You can read what the auditor actually found on a specific farm.

NB -  The fish and its farm are tracked through the same chain of custody system MSC uses, which is why the two labels so often sit side by side in the same freezer. Blue for wild, green for farmed.

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4. Who got paid

Fairtrade

Fairtrade minimum prices and premiums

Search certified organizations

what does it cover?

Terms of trade, not growing methods. This is where the page switches from how food was farmed to what the farmer got paid. Fairtrade sets a Minimum Price for major commodities: a floor that covers average production costs and protects growers from being forced to sell below it when the market drops.
On top of that comes the Fairtrade Premium, an additional sum that farmers and workers decide how to invest themselves, typically in health, education, water or their own business. On plantations the decision sits with a joint body of management and employees.
Forced labor and child labor are prohibited across every Fairtrade standard, defined by the ILO conventions and the UN trafficking protocol. Alongside that come long-term contracts, sourcing plans, prefinance, and environmental criteria that have grown over time.
What it stays silent about: how the food was grown. Fairtrade is not organic, and the two often appear side by side on the same pack as two separate logos.

who wrote the standard?

A multi-stakeholder non-profit, owned by the people it serves. The world's first Fairtrade mark was launched in the Netherlands in November 1988 by Stichting Max Havelaar, which is why older Dutch shoppers still call it by that name.
Today Fairtrade International sets the standards and owns the mark, and it is owned fifty-fifty by the producer networks and the national Fairtrade organizations. Growers hold half the votes over the rules that govern them, which is unusual anywhere on this page.

who checks compliance?

A separate company, created for the purpose. FLOCERT was split off in 2003 specifically so that the people writing the rules would not be the people checking them, and it has held ISO 17065 accreditation since 2007, audited in turn by the German national accreditation body. This is the cleanest separation of powers of any label here.
Every producer organization goes through an on-site audit before it can sell anything as Fairtrade, and a three-year cycle follows with at least two further audits, plus unannounced ones. Audits cover fields, plants and offices, document and financial review, and confidential interviews with workers.
Workers, trade unions, NGOs and private individuals can submit allegations directly, with anonymity guaranteed, and FLOCERT has to process and answer each one.

NB - Read which mark you are looking at. The full Mark means every ingredient available on Fairtrade terms is Fairtrade. The white Sourced Ingredient Mark on a tab means only that one ingredient is.​

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Fair for life

What Fair for life requires

Certified and suspended operators

what does it cover?

Fair trade for everything the big systems leave out. Fair for Life exists because established fair trade certification excluded a lot of socially responsible operations, and it applies across agriculture, fishing and fish farming, natural and artisanal products, cosmetics and textiles.
The standard combines social, environmental and fair trade requirements around eight core themes. Money moves through a development fund, an amount paid to the producer on top of the price, spent strictly on projects the beneficiaries choose collectively.
The logo goes on a product when 80% of its raw materials come from fair trade sources. The same logo appears with For Life in the bar instead, which covers corporate responsibility without the fair trade part.
What it stays silent about: organic growing, which is certified separately.

who wrote the standard?

A certification company. The standard began at the Swiss Institute for Marketecology in 1989 and merged with Ecocert Fair Trade in 2016. Ecocert now owns and runs it.
Which is the thing to notice. At Fairtrade the rule-writing and the checking were deliberately split into two organizations. Here they sit in the same house.

who checks compliance?

An initial on-site audit, then annual audits on a three-year cycle, carried out in line with ISO 17065. Interviews with workers and producers are held without management present, and a translator may not be someone from the operation's management.

NB - Certified operators are published, along with registered and suspended ones. That last list is unusual: most labels show you who passed, not who is currently in trouble.​

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Fair Trade certified

prices and premiums per product

how producers get certified

what does it cover?

The same questions as Fairtrade, with a different answer on who qualifies. Standards cover safe and healthy working conditions, the elimination of forced and child labor, fair and consistent compensation, environmental protections and traceability, with producer communities receiving additional money through Community Development Funds they decide how to spend. Minimum prices and premiums are published per product.
The difference is scope. Fairtrade International limits coffee certification to cooperatives of small farmers. Fair Trade Certified also accepts coffee from large plantations and from independent smallholders who belong to no cooperative. The program spans more than thirty categories including fresh produce, seafood and apparel, and certifies farms in North America too.
What it stays silent about: growing method. This is a trade and labor standard first.

who wrote the standard?

Fair Trade USA, a non-profit founded in 1998 as TransFair USA, based in Oakland, California. It writes several standards: the Agricultural Production Standard for farms, a Capture Fisheries Standard for seafood and a Factory Production Standard for manufacturing, revised periodically according to ISEAL practice.
It was part of Fairtrade International until it resigned in 2011, arguing that limiting coffee certification to cooperatives excluded the poorest workers. Critics argued the move would weaken the standard. The two systems have been separate ever since, which is why this mark carries neither the Fairtrade name nor its logo.

who checks compliance?

External auditing firms, assigned by standard. Farms and fisheries are audited by SCS Global Services and Control Union Services; factories by ARCHE Advisors, TAOS Network or LRQA. Fair Trade USA writes the rules and guides implementation, and the audits happen elsewhere.

NB - Mostly a North American mark. You are unlikely to meet it on European groceries, but it turns up on imported goods and on apparel hang tags, where a "Fair Trade Certified factory" claim means the factory, not the cotton.

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Rainforest Alliance

the Sustainable Agriculture Standard

Rainforest Alliance compared with fairtrade

what does it cover?

Land and people together. The green frog covers forests and biodiversity, human rights, farmer livelihoods and climate, on the reasoning that you cannot fix one without the others. Requirements are split into core requirements, which are pass or fail, and improvement requirements a farm works toward over the certification cycle.
Buyers of certified crops have to pay a Sustainability Differential, a mandatory cash payment to the farm on top of the market price, with no restrictions on how the farm uses it. On top of that comes a Sustainability Investment, cash or in-kind, based on needs the farmers themselves identify in their investment plans. For bananas and other fruit there is a minimum of 5.50 US dollars per tonne.
What it stays silent about: organic growing. Rainforest Alliance restricts pesticides rather than prohibiting them.

who wrote the standard?

An international non-profit. Rainforest Alliance merged with UTZ in 2018, and the two programs became a single Sustainable Agriculture Standard that farms have been audited against since July 2021. Before that, many producers held both certificates and paid for two audits. The frog and the UTZ logo you may remember are the same system now.

​Since March 2026 a Regenerative Agriculture add-on sits on top, with seventeen extra requirements on soil health, biodiversity and crop resilience. It starts with coffee, and certified volumes can be sold as Rainforest Alliance Certified, Certified Regenerative, or Double Certified.

who checks compliance?

Authorized certification bodies, all holding ISO 17065, on a three-year certification cycle with yearly audits. Risk analysis decides where auditors look hardest, using farm data and satellite imagery to flag deforestation before anyone arrives.
Every certified farm and supply chain actor must have a grievance mechanism, and auditors assess whether it actually works. A complaint that goes unresolved can be escalated to the certification body and then to Rainforest Alliance itself.

NB -  Two payments, differently designed. Rainforest Alliance asks buyers to pay extra with no strings attached, where the Fairtrade Premium is collectively decided and earmarked. Rainforest Alliance says plainly the two should not be compared directly.

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5. Where it comes from

PDO, PGI and TSG

eAmbrosia, the EU register of protected names

what does it cover?

Place and method, and nothing else. These are not sustainability labels.
​A Protected Designation of Origin requires that production, processing and preparation all happen inside a defined area, according to a recognized and monitored method. A Protected Geographical Indication asks only that one of those stages happened there. A Traditional Speciality Guaranteed protects a recipe or method rather than a place, so the product can be made anywhere as long as the raw materials, composition or production method have been consistent for at least thirty years.
Across the EU more than three thousand three hundred product names are protected this way. The Dutch list for fruit, vegetables and potatoes is short: Opperdoezer Ronde and Brabantse Wal asparagus hold a PDO, Westlandse Druif and De Meerlander a PGI.
What it stays silent about: how it was farmed. A PDO product can be grown exactly like its conventional neighbor. The protection is against imitation, not against pesticides.

who wrote the standard?

The EU, and then the producers themselves. The framework is law, consolidated in Regulation 2024/1143, which replaced most of the earlier rules. But the specification for each individual product is written by a group of the producers who make it, and applications can only be filed by such a group, never by a single company.
In the Netherlands the applications are handled by RVO and assessed by an advisory committee. Once registered, the name is protected across the whole EU.

who checks compliance?

A competent authority designated by the member state. For Dutch fruit, vegetables and potatoes that is the KCB, appointed by the ministry, which checks producers against the approved product file.
Every registered name and its full specification is public in the EU's own register, eAmbrosia, which means you can read exactly what a product had to do to earn its name.

NB -  Displaying the symbol is mandatory for EU products and voluntary for products from outside the EU. It is also the least recognized mark on this page: in the research behind the 2024 reform, only twenty percent of consumers surveyed recognized the PGI logo.

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6. Who sold it

B-Corp

the seven impact topics

find a B-Corp

what does it cover?

The company, not the product. Everything else on this page describes the food. B Corp describes the business that sold it to you: how it is governed, how it treats its workers, what it does to the environment, how it deals with its community and its customers.
Since April 2025 a company has to meet mandatory minimum requirements on seven impact topics: stakeholder governance, fair work, justice and inclusion, human rights, climate action, environmental stewardship and circularity, and collective action. It also has to change its articles of association to lock stakeholder governance into its legal structure, and show measurable progress at year three and year five.
​
What it stays silent about: the contents of the pack. A B Corp logo on a carton of orange juice tells you about the juice company, and nothing about the oranges.

who wrote the standard?

B Lab, a non-profit. The current requirements replaced an older system in which a company needed 80 points out of 200 across five areas, with no minimum in any single one, so a weak environmental score could be offset by a strong one on workers.
That flexibility drew criticism that companies with poor sustainability records were being certified, and some long-standing B Corps gave up their certification over it. The rewrite closed the loophole: every topic now has to be met on its own.

who checks compliance?

External verification, on a three-year certification cycle. Assessment used to rely partly on companies scoring themselves, and that is being replaced, in part to comply with the EU rules that apply from September 2026.

NB -  Rare on fresh produce. You will meet it on packaged brands: chocolate, ice cream, smoothies, dairy. On a bag of salad it describes the packer.

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​7. Logos that are not labels

The hardest category to spot is the one that borrows the look of certification without the substance. A green leaf in a circle, a checkmark, a globe cradled in two hands, a rounded badge with a reassuring word inside it.
Some of these were designed by a brand's own marketing team and printed on its own products, with nobody outside the company ever checking what they promise.

Some cases sit on the border. Nature & More is a logo belonging to the trading company Eosta, and it adds no requirements of its own on environment or labor.
​The products underneath it may still carry EKO or Demeter certification, so the useful information on that pack is the real label next to the logo.

Since September 27, 2026 Self-created and self-certified sustainability labels are prohibited in the EU, and so are vague claims such as "green", "eco-friendly" or "natural choice" when there is no proof behind them.
Until the shelves have caught up, the three questions at the top of this page do the work.

A quick online search usually settles it:

• Is there an organization behind it with its own name and website, separate from the brand on the pack?
• Are the criteria public, so you can read what the logo actually requires?
• Does someone independent check them, or does the company grade itself?

So which one should you look for?

​No single label wins on every front, and the organizations that compare them say so plainly.
​The more useful question is what matters most to you, and which label actually answers it.

If you care how it was grown

​Organic is the category, and the EU leaf is the floor. It is also the most reliable mark on this page, with the force of law and state-supervised inspection behind it.
The associations build on top of it, each in its own direction: Demeter for the farm as a whole system, Bioland for regional supply chains, Naturland for working conditions, EKO for Dutch origin.
​When organic is out of reach, PlanetProof sets real limits on conventional farming, and the GGN label at least tells you the farm met a certified baseline, including checks on working conditions.

If you care how the animal lived

Read the number on the label.
For meat, dairy and eggs, look for Beter Leven three stars or organic, and in Germany Haltungsform step three or higher. For fish, MSC covers wild catch and ASC covers farmed fish, though neither measures the welfare of the fish itself.

If you care who got paid

Fairtrade offers a guaranteed minimum price and the clearest separation between the people who write the rules and the people who check them. Rainforest Alliance combines land and people in one standard. Fair for Life reaches the products the bigger systems leave out. Among the organic marks, Naturland is the one with binding social standards.

If you care where it comes from

Most labels stay silent on this. The exceptions are Bioland, grown in Germany or South Tyrol, EKO three stars, grown in the Netherlands, and PDO and PGI, tied to a specific region. The origin line under the EU leaf gives a rough answer too.
​For everything else, the country of origin printed on the pack and the season you buy in tell you more than any logo.

The law behind the labels

​The rules come from Directive (EU) 2024/825, adopted in March 2024, transposed by member states by March 2026 and applicable from September 27, 2026.
Across all twenty seven member states, generic environmental claims made without proof are prohibited, along with self created and self certified sustainability labels.
​A climate neutrality claim resting only on offsetting is banned, because the ​claim has to rest on the product's own performance.

​A second piece of legislation, the proposed Green Claims Directive, would have gone further by requiring verification before a claim could be used.
​The Commission announced its intention to withdraw it in June 2025, days before a scheduled negotiation round that was then cancelled, and it was never formally withdrawn. Its status remains unresolved, and it has no bearing on the rules already in force.

On labels

​- A sustainability label is only allowed when a public authority established it or it rests on a certification scheme. Self-created and self-certified labels are out.

- That certification scheme has to be open to every company that meets its requirements, on fair and transparent terms. Its criteria have to be developed with experts and stakeholders, it needs procedures for dealing with non-compliance, up to withdrawing the label, and compliance has to be monitored by a third party independent of both the scheme owner and the company using it.

- The rule covers social labels as well as environmental ones, so a logo about fair wages or good working conditions has to meet the same bar.

On claims

- Generic claims such as "green", "eco-friendly", "natural" or "climate friendly" are prohibited unless the company can show recognized excellent environmental performance, for example through the EU Ecolabel, or explains the claim clearly and specifically on the pack itself.

- A claim about a whole product may not rest on one aspect of it. A bottle made partly from recycled plastic cannot be sold as if the drink inside were sustainable too.

- Claims that a product is climate neutral, carbon neutral or has a reduced climate impact are banned when they rest on offsetting emissions elsewhere. The claim has to rest on the product's own performance.

- A company may not present something the law already requires of every product as a special feature of its own. If a practice is banned across the EU, leaving it out is not an achievement.

- Promises about the future, such as "net zero by 2040", are only allowed with a detailed and realistic plan behind them, with measurable, time-bound targets, checked regularly by an independent expert whose findings are made public.

- Comparing products on sustainability requires telling the consumer what was compared, how, and how recently.