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Walk around the supermarket and you will come across them automatically: sustainable labels. In 2023, 25 percent of sales came from food and beverages with a label such as Rainforest Alliance, Organic and Fair Trade/Max Havelaar. A year earlier, the figure was 22.3 percent.

Sales of organic products are also growing steadily | Credit: Getty Images

This concludes market research firm Circana. Supermarket sales grew by 9.5 percent in 2023. Sales of labeled products grew much faster, at 22 percent.

Chicken

An important event is the replacement of regular chicken meat with products that contain a Beter Leven label from the Animal Protection Society. Since 2023, only such chicken meat has been on supermarket shelves. This has boosted sales of products with a sustainability label.

Fish, eggs and meat

Within this category, 80 percent of sales come from products with an ASC label, which stands for sustainable farmed fish, or the MSC label, which means fish stocks are sustainably managed and bycatch is minimized. This is the highest percentage of all categories.

Eggs come in second with 79 percent. Meat, courtesy of the Better Life label for chicken, comes in third with 60 percent. But other categories such as dairy, bakery products, fruits and vegetables also saw above-average growth.

Organic

Sales of organic products also continued to grow steadily. This represents an increase of almost 15 percent. In terms of organic products, fruits and vegetables, potatoes, preserves, beef, poultry, bread, fish and cheese showed double-digit growth rates.

Recognizability

Despite the good news, there is also criticism of sustainability labels. For example, the Consumer and Market Authority (ACM) has already called for more rules to be imposed on labels. Meanwhile, there are quite a few labels, so consumers can no longer see the forest for the trees. "Sustainability labels can help consumers make sustainable choices, but the information must be verifiable, comparable and clear. That is not the case now. It is up to the legislator to set clear rules for labels," said Cateautje Hijmans van den Bergh, board member of the ACM, earlier.

Wageningen University and Research (WUR) concluded that consumers do not always fully understand or trust labels. It helps if a label is recognizable and clear. That generates trust, making people willing to pay more for the product. The Better Life label is by far the largest sustainability label, accounting for almost 4 billion euros in sales.

Then there is also a difference within the target group of consumers. "Well-informed and motivated consumers, especially women, are most sensitive to labeling," WUR wrote in a study.

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