Benchmarking: ProTerra Standard V5 and Europa Soya Guidelines (Feb 2025)

The requirements of the ProTerra Standard version 5 (PTV5) associated with all its Levels (Level I – Farms; Level II – Transport, Storage, Traders and Dealers; and Level III – Industrial Processing) have been benchmarked against the Europa Soya Guidelines from February 2025 (Europa Soya). The results of the benchmarking indicate an overall level of adherence of 91% between Europa Soya and ProTerra V5.

The adherence noted between the Europa Soya and ProTerra V5 standards opens up the possibility to explore the synergies between both standards with positive outcomes for users, such as a reduced audit burden and lower costs, while optimising the effort in terms of implementation, maintenance and demonstration of a sustainable, transparent and traceable supply chain.

Table 1 below presents the percentage of general alignment of Europa Soya with each of the Principles of ProTerra V5.

Table 1 – Percentage of alignment of Europa Soya with each of the Principles of PT V5.

Table 2 presents the list of additional requirements to be met by organisations certified to the Soy Europe Standard in order to be recognised as compliant with the ProTerra V5 Standard. In addition, the applicability of ProTerra Europe, which only applies to farms, is also presented.

ProTerra Europa, version 2.0, is a regional interpretation that aims at adjusting ProTerra requirements to the European commodity market and to the operational reality of producers in Europe’s diverse countries.

ProTerra’s approach is based on a risk evaluation of the different European countries. This risk assessment considers both the potential presence of GMOs in a crop and the potential for negative environmental and social aspects of agricultural activities in a given European country. A set of ProTerra principles, criteria and indicators is selected for each specific result, against which these producers and/or farms will be assessed. Ultimately, where the level of risk is reduced, the scrutiny will also be reduced.

For more information, including details of the countries considered and their risk level, please refer to the ProTerra Europa requirements at the ProTerra Foundation website.[1]

Should you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at: info@proterrafoundation.org

[1] For the purpose of this benchmarking, the UK is also to be considered as a low-risk country for GMOs and with no risk for negative environmental and social aspects.