The HVE Logo on the Label: The 95 % Rule and Mandatory Wording

Obtaining HVE certification is one thing; displaying it correctly is another. The “From a High Environmental Value farm” logo follows precise usage rules, and a poorly designed label carries a double risk: withdrawal of the visual and an accusation of misleading claim. Here is what you need to know before printing.

A logo backed by a valorising mention

HVE is not an official quality and origin sign like PDO or Label Rouge. It is a valorising mention within the meaning of article L. 640-2 of the Rural and Maritime Fishing Code — the same legal category as “mountain product” or “farm product”. This qualification is not trivial: it frames what the logo may promise the consumer.

The logo itself — “From a High Environmental Value farm” — illustrates this mention and may be used in two situations, with distinct rules depending on whether it is a raw or a processed product.

Raw product: the farm’s certification suffices

On a raw product — a fruit, a vegetable, a bottle of wine from a certified farm — the logo may be used as soon as the farm of origin is certified at level 3 of the environmental certification, that is HVE.

Two checks apply:

• the certificate is at level 3, not level 2: level 2 does not grant the right to the logo;
• the certificate is valid: it is issued for three years, with a surveillance audit during the cycle and a renewal audit before expiry.

Processed product: the 95 % rule

This is where the mistakes concentrate. For a processed product, the logo may only be used if the product is made of at least 95 % agricultural raw materials from farms certified High Environmental Value.

The calculation bears on the agricultural raw materials: added water, salt and additives do not, in principle, enter the calculation in the same way as agricultural ingredients, but the 95 % threshold is assessed on the agricultural component of the product. Below that threshold, the logo is simply not allowed on the finished product, whatever the processor’s environmental commitment otherwise.

This high threshold has a strategic consequence: a product assembling several agricultural ingredients must secure the HVE certification of nearly all its raw materials. A single non-certified raw material representing more than 5 % of the total tips the product out of bounds.

The ban on suggesting the finished product is certified

A second major rule for processed products: labelling must not suggest that the finished product itself is certified High Environmental Value. It is not the jar of jam that is HVE — it is the farm the fruit comes from.

Concretely, the logo must therefore be accompanied by wording specifying that it is the agricultural raw materials, and not the processed product, that are promoted. The exact usage rules of this wording are set by the ministry of agriculture; have your artwork proofread before printing, because it is on this point that misleading-claim disputes crystallise.

Why this rigour: the context of distrust

These rules are not fussy by chance. HVE has faced documented criticism of its real environmental value: a report by the French Office for Biodiversity noted the absence of certain objectives in its standard, and a collective of seven associations petitioned the Conseil d’État in January 2023 for consumer deception — a request rejected on 18 February 2025. In this climate, a label that overpromises hands ammunition to the critics and weakens the whole sector.

The underlying difficulty is that consumers distinguish environmental signs from one another poorly. The work of Grunert, Hieke and Wills published in 2014 in Food Policy shows that knowledge of sustainability labels remains limited and that the multiplication of signs fuels confusion (see the study). A precisely used logo, with its explanatory wording, protects better than a valorising but ambiguous visual.

Display does not make the premium

Finally, one must guard against an illusion: using the logo does not guarantee a commercial return. The work of Magali Delmas and Neil Lessem published in 2017 in Business & Society (“Eco-Premium or Eco-Penalty?”) shows that displaying an eco-label on a product may, in some contexts, be read as a signal of lower quality and neutralise the expected effect on price (see the study). The same authors also showed that the value of a certification often passes more through access to a market — a tender, a buyer’s specification — than through a displayed price premium.

The consequence is clear: get the logo’s compliance right, but do not rely on it alone to sell at a higher price. HVE’s value often plays out upstream of the shelf — in public catering under the EGalim law, or in the “certification” route of the CAP eco-scheme.

Checklist before printing

• The certificate of the farm of origin is at level 3 and valid.
• For a processed product, at least 95 % of the agricultural raw materials come from HVE-certified farms, with the calculation documented.
• The logo is accompanied by the wording specifying that it is the raw materials, not the finished product, that are promoted.
• The logo visual matches the official version and its usage rules.
• No wording suggests equivalence with organic farming or the status of an official quality sign.

Take action

Before committing to a label print run, gather the certificates of your farms of origin, document the 95 % calculation for your processed products and have your artwork proofread against the ministry’s usage rules. For the whole scheme — levels, standard, audit, outlets — see our guide to HVE certification and our article on HVE and the EGalim law.