We Care – the sustainability label for food companies and their entire supply chains

We Care sets comprehensive sustainability standards and offers a certification programme for companies operating in the food industry. We Care certification focuses on all aspects of sustainability. This means it:

  • encompasses both environmental and CSR standards;
  • evaluates entire product ranges, not just selected flagship products;
  • and evaluates companies’ own sustainability efforts as well as their supply chain management.

We Care helps companies to embed sustainability systematically within their operations, to continuously improve sustainability performance and to make their efforts credible and easy to communicate through external auditing and certification.

Value creation in the food industry always has to be considered in a global context. Companies today need to ensure that they are managing their businesses and creating value across their supply chains in a fair, sustainable and socially responsible way. On top of that, they need to prove that their efforts are credible. All this can seem like a daunting challenge. This is where We Care can help.

Any food company that imports, processes or produces food themselves can become We Care certified. This also applies to companies that partly or exclusively use third parties to produce raw materials or finished products and companies that operate as wholesalers or retailers for their raw materials or finished products.

There are already numerous certification programmes in place that validate whether products are produced in a fair, sustainable or organic way at the raw material phase. We Care therefore primarily focuses on sustainability management during the subsequent phases in each supply chain, for example, when goods are imported, manufactured and branded. We Care also takes an across-the-board approach to sustainable supply chain management by promoting the use of organic, fair trade and sustainability certifications at producer level in all supply chains.

What can We Care do for you? We Carecan:

  • Introduce a comprehensive standard with a uniform certification system.
  • Support integrated sustainability management systems for specific business locations and supply chains in the food industry.
  • Provide an independent auditing and validation service for sustainable operations.
  • Certify management systems.
  • Help you focus on areas of development either at a basic or advanced level.
  • Offer an integrated system instead of multiple certifications for companies that have not yet implemented sustainability standards.
  • Integrate existing environmental and CSR certifications and close any remaining gaps in sustainability management for companies that already have separate sustainability certifications in place.
  • Ensure credibility and transparency across supply chains.
  • Provide information that can be used in corporate communications.
  • Produce evidence of sustainability management and sustainable supply chain management to business partners (B2B) and interested members of the public.
  • Provide transparency for consumers by means of a corporate sustainability label that can be displayed on organic products. This only applies when companies adhere to comprehensive sustainability standards across the board and not just for selected products. (The label can only be used if advanced certification is achieved for B2C.)

We Care’sresponsible body

The German division of the Research Institute of Organic Agriculture e.V. (FiBL Germany) is the body responsible for the We Care standard. FiBL holds all the rights to the standard and the We Care label.