The baseline report of the project “Biodiversity in Standards and Labels for the Food Sector”, produced by the European initiative of the same name, will be presented on 6 June at 2:30 PM, at Alimentaria Horexpo, FIL (Parque das Nações, Lisbon), in a session promoted by IST’s MARETEC.

The report illustrates the strengths and weaknesses of standards and labels in the agro-food sector on a number of drivers with impact on biodiversity and identifies ways to improve the performance of this sector.

Fifty-four European, national and regional standards and labels were analyzed by the project partners, including several Portuguese standards and labels.
The analysis addressed not only the policies of the standards/labels but also the criteria contained in their specifications, which the producers and associated suppliers have to comply with. These criteria were analyzed in terms of effectiveness for biodiversity conservation, compliance regime (mandatory or recommended), transparency and auditability.

The report presents not only the results on each driver with impact on biodiversity but also conclusions, which indicate the need (and potential) for improving the biodiversity performance standards and labels at the European level. Examples of effective criteria on various standards/labels are given.

The project “Biodiversity in Standards and Labels for the Food Sector” runs from 2016 to 2020 and comprises 7 partners: Global Nature Fund, Lake Constance Foundation and Agentur AUF! (Germany), Fundación Global Nature (Spain), Solagro and agoodforgood (France) and IST (Portugal).