July 25, 2024

Key updates

New version of our Cocoa Policy

Following a cocoa certification workshop in Abidjan earlier this year as well as numerous consultations with various regional teams we have updated the cocoa policy to V1.3. Main changes include:

• Improvements on where geolocation data must be taken to increase the credibility of risk maps
• Further escalating the polygon requirement to 50% in CdI and Ghana
• Aligning geodata decimal points to 6 places to align with EUDR
• Further clarifications on the role of our member monitoring team and the need for CHs to provide them with action plans for improvement following a visit, this is also aligned with our continued effort to increase support to our CHs in country and improve the credibility of our certification program

You can find the Cocoa Policy here in English and in French.

For more information, please reach out to Bini Kouassi.

Adding EUDR to Scope for Active CH Licenses

It is now also possible for both farm and supply chain certificate holders to add EUDR criteria to their active license immediately, without waiting for the next license renewal.  Many of our certificate holders had not opted-in before renewing their license, so we have introduced this process so more certificate holders will have the opportunity to opt into our EUDR offer through certification.  We have updated our external-facing FAQ to give guidance on how to add EUDR to an active license here. 

Please reach out to a member of the EUDR Project Team if you have any questions or connect with Robert McCormick or Maria van Kooij.

EUDR Aligned Certificate Holders list on Website

A new public list of EUDR Aligned Certificate holders will go live on our website as of July 31st. This report includes those Certificate Holders that have been audited and meet additional EUDR self-selected requirements in the Rainforest Alliance´s Alignment with EUDR policy. These requirements are only applicable to cocoa and coffee Farm Certificate Holders. Certified farms can choose to implement these additional requirements and have these covered in their audits to support actors further down their supply chains to comply with the EUDR and continue selling their products on the EU market.

You can find the report that will be published here: List of CHs (RA 2020 standard) EUDR - Power BI

For questions, please contact Andrea Valenzuela.

New content published

EUDR one-sheet 
EUDR web explainer and FAQ
Assurance web explainer