Beginning this week, Rainforest Alliance Certified cocoa farmers can opt-in to specific criteria that align with European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) requirements, within the Rainforest Alliance certification platform. This will allow companies to source from participating farms, trace those ingredients through their supply chains, and leverage farm data by the regulation's deadline to prove that they have a system in place to assess and mitigate deforestation risks in their supply chains, at no additional cost, supporting them to make progress towards full compliance.
The regulation will require companies and traders placing products that contain any of the seven deforestation-risk commodities, including cocoa, on the EU market, or exporting them from the EU, to prove by December 30, 2024, that these products do not originate from land deforested after December 31, 2020.