A standardised European method to assess the environmental footprint of food products — from field to fork, transparent and comparable across the single market.
A standardised European method to assess the environmental footprint of food products — from field to fork, transparent and comparable across the single market.
Eco Food Choice operationalises the European Product Environmental Footprint Category Rules for food. Open, repeatable, and audit-ready — every assumption is published.
Define the product, functional unit and full life-cycle perimeter — from primary production to end of life, following PEFCR rules.
Collect primary data from producers and complement with the European reference database to model every stage of the supply chain.
Compute 16 environmental indicators — climate, water, biodiversity, eutrophication, resource use — aggregated through a weighted PEF single score.
Translate the result into a five-tier A-to-E grade — readable in two seconds at the shelf, comparable across categories and member states.
Short videos from the consortium: explainer, partner interviews, pilot field reports.
Project outputs are released under an open licence as soon as they are validated. Direct PDF downloads, no registration required.
Workshops, conferences and training sessions across the project's pilot territories. Details published as each event approaches.
Public agencies, research institutes and food sector organisations from four member states. Co-funded by the European Union under the LIFE programme.
Eco Food Choice is a four-year LIFE programme project that operationalises the European Product Environmental Footprint method for the food sector — at scale, across borders, and in a way consumers can actually understand.
Today, more than thirty national eco-labels coexist in Europe. They use different perimeters, different data, different scales. The result: confusion for shoppers, friction for producers, and no level playing field for the most sustainable choices.
Our consortium of sixteen partners — public agencies, research institutes, industry federations and retailers — is piloting a single, science-based labelling system across six member states. Built on the EU PEFCR framework, validated against three hundred real products, and stress-tested in supermarkets, foodservice and online marketplaces.
Short updates from the project team. No follow-up articles — what you read here is what we have to say.
Our pilot phase reached its first major milestone this week. Producers across five member states completed inventory submissions and the consortium published the inaugural batch of A-to-E grades.
Our team's work on uncertainty propagation in food PEF scoring will appear in JCP volume 478. The article details the Monte Carlo approach used to express score confidence intervals.
Two days of working sessions hosted by AINIA reviewed Year 2 progress, validated the data-collection protocol revision and set targets for the September stakeholder forum in Berlin.
For three months, twenty product categories will display Eco Food Choice grades alongside existing labels. Shopper behaviour and willingness-to-pay are being measured by an independent research team.
Producers, certifiers, NGOs and academics are invited to comment on the revised technical specification. All feedback will be published with traceable response from the methodology committee.
The Danish Veterinary and Food Administration and a major Italian retail group join as associated partners, bringing the network to sixteen organisations across the European Union.
If your question isn't covered here, the contact form below is the fastest way to reach the coordination team.
Eco Food Choice is a four-year European LIFE programme project (2024–2028) that operationalises the EU Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) method for the food sector. We’re piloting a single, science-based environmental score that can be displayed on food products across all EU member states, replacing today’s patchwork of national labels.
We use the European PEFCR food methodology, a life-cycle assessment that accounts for 16 environmental indicators — including climate change, water use, eutrophication, biodiversity and resource depletion — from primary production through processing, distribution, retail and end of life. These indicators are then aggregated through a transparent weighting scheme into a single A-to-E grade.
Nutri-Score communicates nutritional quality, not environmental impact. Existing eco-score initiatives use proprietary, often nationally-defined methodologies. Eco Food Choice is built directly on the EU PEFCR framework, the only environmental method officially recommended by the European Commission — making it harmonised, auditable and comparable across the single market.
Eco Food Choice is a research and pilot project, not regulation. Our goal is to demonstrate a feasible, robust methodology that the European Commission, member states and the food industry can then choose to adopt. Decisions on mandatory display sit with EU and national policymakers — we provide the evidence and the tools.
Yes. Producers can submit products for assessment by following our open data collection protocol (available in the Resources section). Industry federations, NGOs and certifying bodies can also contribute to our open methodology consultations. Use the contact form to discuss specific partnership opportunities.
Yes. All deliverables, the technical specification, the data-collection protocol and peer-reviewed publications are released under a CC-BY licence as soon as they are validated. Scientific outputs are also archived on Zenodo with persistent DOIs. Anyone can replicate, audit or extend our work.
By design. Every score relies on documented inputs, transparent weighting and a third-party verification step. The full inventory and assumptions behind each evaluated product are published. This makes claims comparable across producers and verifiable by certifying bodies, NGOs and journalists.
The current technical specification (v0.4) is in open consultation through mid-2026. A finalised version is scheduled for late 2027, after large-scale retail pilots in Spain, Germany, Italy, France and the Netherlands. Project completion is set for August 2028 with public-facing deliverables across the full duration.
Reach out to the project coordination team. We answer every legitimate enquiry — usually within five working days.