It might not come as much of a surprise that Tony’s Chocolonely has expressed its support for the EU Regulation on Deforestation-free Products (EUDR). The Dutch chocolate maker is known as much for its emphasis on sustainable business practices as for the cartoonish labels that have enveloped its products since 2005. Tony’s even came out strongly against a delay in the EUDR rules designed to ensure that cocoa and six other commodities entering the European Union don’t come at the cost of forests elsewhere. What may be more surprising is that mainstream companies have also been pushing for the EUDR, which, whenever it becomes enforceable, will require an unprecedented level of monitoring and due diligence on supply chains for products entering the EU. “Tony’s has been a very key part of this, but it wasn’t just the social enterprises,” Antonie Fountain, co-founder and managing director of the Voice of Organisations In Cocoa (VOICE), said in an interview. “The world’s largest food and beverage company is Nestlé, and they’ve been doing a lot of very publicly visible, proactive outreach on behalf of these regulations.” VOICE is a cocoa watchdog group based in the Netherlands focused on advocacy and research. It’s the group behind the publication of the Cocoa Barometer, which aims to provide a “state of sustainability” in the sector every two years. “This is the thing that really excites me about the cocoa sector,” Fountain said. And it’s among the most prepared to comply of all the commodities the EUDR…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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