Upcoming update of the carbon data basis

What is coming. The new data basis can pave the way to a European standard for the carbon labelling of food: we are moving all our calculations onto it. We are among the first providers of climate ratings for food to have made their calculation system public, and since the end of August the new data basis is published as well. Your values will thus, for the first time, rest on data and models that anyone can inspect and recompute. Together with the data basis, the reference unit (Daily Food Unit, 2026 definition) and the rating benchmark are being updated, and results are reported under the EF 3.1 climate-change method (IPCC AR6 GWP100 factors, with fossil, biogenic and land-use components).

What is behind it. We are moving the foundations of our food calculations to the open UVEK/BAFU life-cycle inventories, combined with revised process models for agriculture, feeding and processing. This is more than swapping the background data: we revised the process layer in between — more than 70 publicly documented building blocks for transport, fertilisers, packaging, land use and the individual product groups, process-based emission models for agriculture instead of adopted averages, a confidence on every emission flow, and a quality system with regression tests.

When. Values and rating thresholds switch together on the date of the switch. We announce that date to every customer in good time beforehand and publish the detailed change record for the released data version at the switch. Until then, values and rating thresholds stay on the current basis; a sample output with old and new values is available on request.

What you can expect. Because the models become more specific, CO₂ values and ratings can change even where recipes stay the same. From our comparison runs on real menus:

Food group	Direction	Why
Beef, cream and butter, hard cheese	up	Herd model counts enteric methane and manure explicitly, where one average figure was applied before; milk intake per kilogram of cheese corrected
Rice	up	Anchored on measured paddy-rice cultivation instead of a global market average; paddy methane, counted before and now, varies about fourfold by growing region and the new anchor sits at the higher end
Pork, veal	down	Built up from actual feed and rearing systems instead of a flat average figure
Coffee	down	Land-use change at the farm stage on published research
Fruit and vegetables, sauces	slightly down on balance	Many small re-anchorings on updated European reference data
Chicken, fish	mixed by origin	Country-specific models; individual products can move either way

These are directions from the migration analysis of August 2026 (data version 1.7.0); the final figures come with the release. The rating thresholds move with the values, so most dishes keep their rating; a dish moves only where its ingredients genuinely stand out against the new, more accurate assessment. Final figures per product family, with before and after values, are published with the release.

A change in the calculation is not a change in emissions. A lower value after the switch describes the updated assessment basis. Real reductions are judged on comparable calculation versions.

The inventory detail per product family, with before and after values per assessed product, is in our website changelog. More: open data and model documentation · benchmark derivation (provisional). A data release records a data version; the independent assessment of the rating system is a separate step, and its status is published on the same portal.