An item-by-item audit of every environmental, origin, and sustainability claim on your webshop, product pages, packaging copy, and social channels — each one sorted into keep, keep with evidence attached, or remove before the new EU rules start being enforced. The register also shows which claims are worth building on.
Directive (EU) 2024/825 changes what a food company may say about its products. Member states must have it in national law by 27 March 2026, and the measures apply from 27 September 2026. It works by adding new entries to the blacklist of unfair commercial practices — the list of claims that are prohibited outright, with no case-by-case assessment. Generic environmental claims without demonstrated excellent environmental performance. Claims about the whole product when only one aspect qualifies. Sustainability labels that aren't based on a certification scheme or set by a public authority. Carbon-neutrality claims resting on offsetting.
Most food webshops are carrying dozens of these claims without knowing it, spread across product descriptions written years ago by three different people, category pages nobody has read since launch, and packaging artwork already at the printer. Nobody has a list. That is the actual problem: not that the claims are wrong, but that nobody can say how many there are or where they sit.
So we make the list. We crawl the site, pull every claim out of the product copy, category text, banners, and the packaging and social material you send us, and classify each one against the amended blacklist and the Finnish Competition and Consumer Authority's guidance on environmental marketing. You get a register — claim, where it appears, verdict, what evidence would rescue it, suggested replacement wording. Fixed scope, fixed price, one round of re-audit after you've made the changes.
As a compliance chore, the register is a delete list. It is worth more than that. The claims that survive with evidence attached are the ones a buyer will pay a premium for, and they tell you which data to structure first. Competitors will spend 2026 deleting words; you get to build on the ones that hold.
Directive (EU) 2024/825 entered into force on 26 March 2024. Member states, Finland included, must have it in national law by 27 March 2026, and the measures apply from 27 September 2026. Packaging ordered well before that date will still be on shelves after it, which is why artwork decisions are the urgent ones.
The directive adds entries to the blacklist in Annex I of the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive — practices banned with no case-by-case assessment. Among them: generic environmental claims such as "eco-friendly", "green", or "climate friendly" where the trader cannot demonstrate recognised excellent environmental performance; claims about the entire product when only one aspect qualifies; sustainability labels not based on a certification scheme or established by a public authority; and claims that a product is carbon neutral, or has neutral or reduced environmental impact, where that rests on offsetting emissions rather than on the product's own lifecycle.
Origin claims are not environmental claims, and the directive does not ban them. What it changes is the standard of proof around the environmental and sustainability language that usually travels with them. An origin claim still has to be true and substantiable under ordinary consumer protection rules, which in practice means being able to show which producer and which batch a given product came from — the reason this audit and our product data model work tend to be bought together.
Two to three weeks from kickoff for most catalogues. You get a register listing every claim found, where it appears, a verdict of allowed, allowed-with-evidence, or must-be-removed, the specific evidence each surviving claim needs, and suggested replacement wording for the ones that fail. One re-audit of the corrected pages is included.
No. It is a marketing-compliance audit: we find the claims, classify them, and gather the evidence position. We mark clearly which items are clear-cut and which are judgement calls, so that if a borderline claim matters commercially you can take the register to your own counsel rather than paying them to do the inventory work first.
Scope note. This is a marketing-compliance audit, not legal advice. We produce the evidence and the classification; if a borderline claim is commercially important to you, take our register to your counsel and let them rule on it. We will say plainly which items are clear-cut and which are judgement calls.