Deforestation regulation information flow in the food chain

GS1 Finland has launched a development project together with the Finnish food industry and grocery trade operators, which aims at a practical level to solve the new information requirements set for the food chain by the EU's deforestation regulation. The collaboration seeks a cost-effective solution that supports the sustainable operation and competitiveness of Finland's food chain operators.

With the deforestation regulation, companies in the food chain face entirely new requirements for collecting and sharing information. Information is needed from the primary production and, in some cases, even at the level of production batches. The development project responds to the industry's call by developing models that allow the necessary information to be collected and shared efficiently and consistently among the operators who need it.

Joint solutions aim to avoid the costs of developing and maintaining company-specific and overlapping systems. The project considers the scalability of information flow also in light of other forthcoming legislative requirements. This improves operators' ability to respond quickly to changing legislation.

The member companies of the Food Data Finland project and, after the end of the project, also the operators of other industries affected by the deforestation regulation, can freely use the project's outputs in their own business.

Tasks and objectives

The project identifies the information needed for the deforestation regulation, which operators must be able to collect, produce and share from primary production to trade.
The project describes the necessary changes to processes, operating models and systems and evaluates their cost effects.
The project also takes into account the scaling of the model to other upcoming legislative requirements.
The outputs of the project will be a data model, a user manual and a data flow description of the information required by the deforestation regulation.