ECO FOOD CHOICE – method development for food labelling is progressing

From 5 to 7 November 2025, the annual meeting of the EU LIFE project ECO FOOD CHOICE took place to present and discuss the results of the various partners. ECO FOOD CHOICE is developing a harmonised life cycle assessment method for agricultural and food products for environmental labelling. This includes, among other things, a method for extrapolating data sets to supplement missing life cycle assessment data sets in databases or to transfer data sets from one country to another. corsus is part of the consortium and our managing director Ulrike Eberle attended this year’s annual meeting in Paris.

Against the backdrop of current developments in the European Union and worldwide, which are increasingly pushing urgently needed environmental and climate protection measures into the background, the challenges are considerable. Nevertheless, the work being done by ECO FOOD CHOICE is urgently needed and forward-looking. This is because, in Germany for example, there is currently no consistent and free life cycle assessment database for foodstuffs, such as the Agribalyse database available in France.

This time, the discussions of the project team, which consists of nine organisations from four European countries, focused on the feedback from the public consultation on the beta version of the ECO FOOD CHOICE method and on further methodological development. Participation in the consultation process was very good, which underlines the importance of the project and the process. The feedback and other recent scientific developments will now be incorporated into the method. One point of discussion is the functional unit, i.e. the reference value on which every life cycle assessment is based. corsus has been working on this for several years to determine what the appropriate reference value for food could be. Corsus gave a presentation on this topic at last year’s international scientific food life cycle assessment conference in Barcelona, among other events. It was an exciting discussion, not least because the decision also depends on the results of consumer research. We look forward to continuing to work with a highly inspiring and competent international team.