As elaborated on in this article by our colleague Bram Nijhof every February, the Authority for Consumers and Markets ("ACM"), shares its agenda for the coming year. One of the themes the ACM has decided to focus on in 2025 concerns sustainability of the economy. The ACM aims to encourage companies to use fair and clear sustainability claims.
Enforcement
Although the ACM has acted against such claims in the past, this year it will focus specifically on sustainability claims in the food sector. Enforcement by the ACM does not (always) directly lead to the imposition of a fine, but often starts with an (informal) warning after which offenders make commitments to adjust or remove their claims. However, the ACM is expected to take direct action more often in the future.
For a while, it was unclear which authority enforced against such claims: the question remained whether the ACM or the Netherlands Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority ("NVWA") is responsible. The separation between the supervisory powers of these authorities has now become clearer: the NVWA focuses on false or prohibited claims on food labelling or websites regarding nutrition, health and medical efficacy, while the ACM's activities are aimed at misleading sustainability claims from this sector.
Calvé's sustainability claims
That sustainability claims are a much debated topic is also demonstrated by the recent decision of the Advertising Code Committee ("RCC") regarding misleading sustainability claims by Calvé. Calvé is a brand of Unilever, specifically well-known for its peanut butter.
The sustainability claim "We use sustainably cultivated peanuts" (in Dutch: "Wij gebruiken duurzaam geteelde pinda's") on Calvé's peanut butter jars was deemed by the RCC to violate the Sustainability Claims Code. The RCC recommended Calvé to stop advertising in this way.
The complainant argued that Calvé's claim suggested that the entire product was "sustainable", because the font size used for that word is twice the size of the other text of the claim, and that therefore the term "sustainable" does not only refer to the peanuts. The RCC did not agree with this; it is sufficiently clear to the average consumer that the word "sustainable" refers only to the "cultivated peanuts" and not to the jar of peanut butter as a whole.
The RCC, however, considers the other grounds for the complaint to be justified: the sustainability claim is unclear. It is not evident from the information on the label whether the peanut butter consists entirely or only partially of "sustainably cultivated peanuts". Although the label shows a QR code referring to a web page, it is not sufficiently clear that this code is intended to explain the sustainability claim. The QR code is not displayed near the sustainability claim and no clear reference to the QR code is made in the claim. In addition, based on the information on the webpage, it cannot be assessed whether and how Calvé concretely implements this sustainability claim (i.e. when the peanuts are considered to be sustainable).
Key takeaway
Given that the ACM focusses on enforcement in the food sector this year, it is specifically important that companies in the food sector apply the ACM's Sustainability Claims Guide correctly. This Guideline has 5 rules of thumb:
- Use correct, clear, specific and complete sustainability claims;
- Substantiate sustainability claims with facts and keep them up to date;
- Make fair comparisons with other products or competitors;
- Describe future sustainability ambitions concretely and measurably; and
- Make sure visual claims and labels are helpful to consumers and not confusing.
Specifically, the relevance of rules of thumb 1, 2 and 4 are confirmed by the Calvé ruling. In order for the claim to be measureable, complete, honest and factual, information should always be provided to concretely explain how a company is pursuing its sustainability ambitions.
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