Coffee regulation
A bag of green coffee crosses a border, a roastery, a label, a yellow recycling bin. At each step a different text applies, written by a different authority, often for a product other than coffee. The Union sets a maximum level of ochratoxin A, a mold toxin, for roasted coffee but not for green; France defines the word “coffee” by a decree of 1991; the countries of origin issue certificates whose use at the Union’s entry is documented only by those who issue them; and the labels people take to be legal are, for the most part, private contracts. This plate follows the bag from plot to cup, says who regulates what, what each text really asks, of whom, and where it is silent.
State of the law as of October 21, 2026. The law changes: each section says what comes into force after that date, and the last lists all the deadlines in order.
In this plate
The 12 sections, each on its own page. The first sentence of each lead says what is found there.
- 01The framework: who regulates what, step by stepThere is no coffee law.
- 02Names and composition: what may be called coffeeThe word “coffee” is reserved, and the rule that reserves it is French, dating from 1991, still in force.
- 03The label, statement by statementThe European regulation on consumer information applies to coffee as to any food, with three exemptions that make it singular: no ingredient list for a pure coffee, no nutrition declaration, no caffeine warning.
- 04Safety and contaminants: the thresholds, and who measuresCoffee contaminants arise in two places: at drying and storage, where molds make ochratoxin A, and in the roaster, where heat makes acrylamide and furan.
- 05Hygiene, traceability, recall: what a workshop must doA roasting workshop is a food establishment like a bakery: it registers, it analyzes its hazards, it knows where each bag comes from and to whom it sold each lot, and it publicly recalls what must be recalled.
- 06Importing: customs, origin, VAT, certificates, quarantineGreen coffee enters the Union with no customs duty; roasted, decaf and instant coffee pay it, the more so the more they are processed.
- 07Packaging and waste: from the bag to the capsuleA coffee bag obeys three bodies of law at once: that of contact, which forbids it to give anything to the bean, that of waste, which asks it to be sortable and recyclable, and that of speech, which governs what is printed on it.
- 08Sustainability and due diligence: deforestation, reporting, vigilanceFor the first time, a text asks coffee to prove where it grew.
- 09Labels and certifications: the law and the contract“Organic” is a Union law: a regulation, control bodies approved by the State, an electronic certificate for each operator and for each imported lot.
- 10Geographical indications and brands: who owns the name of an origin, and who controls itPrinting “Café de Colombia” and the PGI logo, the one for the protected geographical indication, on a bag roasted in France does not depend on a simple choice of label: the name belongs to a product specification, and the roaster must, in practice, have its coffee certified by the Colombian body Cafecert before writing it.
- 11Claims: what may be written about coffee, and what no longer mayHealth, nature, origin, craft, planet: five families of words, five legal regimes.
- 12What changes in 2026-2027, and what is not knownThis section goes out of date, and says so.