The global food industry is undergoing a significant transformation driven by key regulations like the FSMA 204 in the United States and the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR). These regulations aim to ensure food safety and promote sustainability, but they also represent significant challenges for businesses, especially for producers and exporters in regions like Latin America.
Recently, the FDA announced its intention to delay the FSMA 204 compliance date by 30 months, moving the estimated date to around July 2028. This decision reflects the complexity of the rule and the time needed to ensure complete coordination across the supply chain. However, this delay should not be seen as a pause. It is, instead, a strategic opportunity to address compliance in a more measured way and, crucially, to invest in future-ready traceability. In fact, many retailers around the world are already requiring traceability data from their suppliers, even ahead of the official EUDR or FSMA 204 deadline.
On the other hand, the EUDR is a regulation aimed at reducing the EU’s contribution to global deforestation by ensuring that certain products do not come from land deforested after December 31, 2020. It affects commodities such as palm oil, soy, coffee, cocoa, beef, rubber, and timber, as well as their derivatives. The EUDR is set to enter into application on December 2025, for most companies, with a longer transition period for micro and small enterprises. Regardless of the exact effective date for each company type, the time to prepare for the EUDR is much more limited than for FSMA 204.
The EUDR requires rigorous due diligence processes and full traceability back to the origin, at the farm or plantation level. This presents a significant challenge, especially for smallholder producers in Latin America, who often operate within informal systems and with limited digital infrastructure, making it difficult to prove compliance. A lack of preparation can result in exclusion from the EU market, despite sustainable practices. The EUDR also requires the segregation of compliant and non-compliant goods, both physically and through documentation; mixing compliant and non-compliant goods will result in entire shipments being deemed non-compliant.
Both FSMA 204 and EUDR underscore the urgent need for digitization and robust traceability in supply chains. Both regulations, although with different focuses (food safety vs. sustainability), require detailed visibility into the origin and journey of the product.
For producers and exporters in Latin America, the combination of a delay in FSMA 204 (providing more leeway) and the proximity of EUDR (creating immediate urgency) creates a key strategic moment to act. Waiting until the last minute, especially for EUDR, can lead to significant challenges. Starting the process of digitization and implementing traceability systems now allows for a more measured approach to FSMA 204, while ensuring the necessary preparation to comply with EUDR in time and maintain access to key markets like the EU.
Traditional systems like ERPs are excellent for managing transactions, which focus on financial aspects and movement records. However, for effective traceability that satisfies both regulators (FSMA 204, EUDR) and consumers, you need to track events. Every harvest, packaging step, shipment, or transformation is an event that provides granular and truthful details about the product’s history.
This is where a connected products platform, like the one offered by Darwin Evolution, adds fundamental value. Our platform is designed to capture this event-level visibility across the entire supply chain. By integrating data from various sources (including existing systems like ERP, MES, WMS, as well as files or manual input), we eliminate data silos and create a single source of truth. This facilitates the seamless data sharing required by regulations and trading partners, and provides the ability to generate electronic sortable spreadsheets within 24 hours, as required by FSMA 204.
The Darwin Evolution platform helps producers and exporters in Latin America meet the requirements of FSMA 204 and EUDR, as well as the demands of major retailers like Kroger and Walmart. It allows tracking products from origin to consumer, managing the segregation of compliant products, and creating immutable records using blockchain that can be easily accessed, for example, via a QR code on packaging to engage the consumer.
Investing now in a comprehensive, future-ready traceability solution not only ensures compliance with current and future regulations but also unlocks additional value: improved operational efficiency, greater transparency, strengthened relationships with suppliers and customers, and building consumer trust and loyalty. It allows you to turn regulatory challenges into lasting strategic advantages.
The time to act is now. Leveraging the strategic pause in FSMA 204 and proactively preparing for the imminent EUDR will position Latin American businesses as leaders in transparency, sustainability, and efficiency in the global market.