Paris (AFP)
Passed last year, the Food law, including the increase in the resale threshold at a loss (SRP), led to sign a "blank check of 1.6 billion euros to large retailers," denounce Friday. UFC-Que Choisir and the peasant confederation.
"While the increase of 10% of the PRS inflicts to consumers an inflation which should represent according to our calculations 1,6 billion euros over two years, the rebalancing of the commercial negotiations so much awaited by the farmers and promoted by the law (resulting from Etats généraux de l'alimentation, editor's note) did not take place, "say the two organizations.
"The mass distribution and the industry continue to impose agricultural prices below cost prices in many sectors," say the consumer association and the agricultural union in a joint statement.
The UFC-Que Choisir and the peasant confederation, "refusing both this unacceptable blank check of consumers for mass distribution and the wooden check received by farmers", ask the government to abandon "immediate" recovery of the PRS and the establishment of a "real rebalancing" of the negotiations for agricultural actors.
Passed last year, the Egalim law (or law Food) must allow to get out of an untenable domino effect: the price war between the four major retailers in France pushes them to claim ever lower rates from their suppliers of the agri-food industry, who themselves in turn buy the cheapest agricultural raw material from farmers at the end of the chain.
One of its flagship provisions, the increase of the SRP, provides that a food product will have to be sold at least 10% more expensive than the price at which it was purchased.
On the basis of "a price study carried out on all the stores of the big retailers", by analyzing the tariffs of the firm Nielsen weighted by the sales volumes of the panelist IRI, the food prices underwent at the time of the entry into strength of the measure (as of 1 February 2019, ed) a "sharp increase" of more than 0.83% in one month only.
Moreover, the statement added, instead of moderating their margins, as they had promised "in exchange for the rise of the PRS", manufacturers and supermarkets have not kept their promise.
According to the statement, "for UHT milk, whereas since 2017 the price paid to the farmer has decreased by 5%, the margin of the distributors has instead increased by 8%".
Finally, the UFC-Que Choisir and the farmers' confederation denounce the failure to take into account the cost price for the farmer to fix the purchase price, which was one of the promises of the law: " thus, cow's milk is bought 15% below the production price and the meat 14% ".
© 2019 AFP