Charles Guyard (in Nantes) / Photo credits: VICTORIA VALDIVIA / HANS LUCAS / HANS LUCAS VIA AFP 10:24 a.m., January 30, 2024

Faced with the unfair competition that they have been denouncing for several days, farmers organized a strike operation on Monday at the Bignon toll south of Nantes, where they checked the cargo of trucks transporting foreign foodstuffs.

Pears from Portugal, tomatoes and zucchini from Spain, honey from Romania... On the stalls of the Rungis market or on the shelves of your supermarket, it is very common to find products from all over the world. This is one of the major projects on which Gabriel Attal is particularly expected today for his general policy speech: foreign competition, often described as unfair, because it does not impose the same standards.

To denounce it, farmers organized a strike operation on Monday at the Bignon toll booth south of Nantes, where they checked the cargoes of trucks transporting foodstuffs, in particular a load of... Ukrainian mozzarella. 

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Ukrainian mozzarella to top pizzas

“When we opened the package, we saw cheese that came from Ukraine.” Milk producer in Loire-Atlantique, Gaël Drouet holds in his arms a box of mozzarella spotted in the cargo of a refrigerated truck coming from the Nantes area. Made in Ukraine, this cheese must be delivered to Charente-Maritime to garnish pizzas intended for the French market. 

Added to this ecological aberration is the anger of this breeder, disgusted at being left aside by French industrialists. "We are capable of doing it. The dairy cows are a quarter of an hour from here. We have a factory in Loire-Atlantique which makes very good mozzarella. There is no need to go to Ukraine ", he says.

“We don’t play in the same league at all”

Except that processors do not think in terms of proximity, but of price. "They buy cheaper in Ukraine, so that allows them to have a higher margin than buying French cheese. For us, to compete with them, it's complicated because the production costs that we have in France are not the same as production in Ukraine. “They do not have the same standards as us, the operating costs are not the same. We are not playing in the same league at all,” he continues. According to farmers, this unfair foreign competition contributes to the disappearance of livestock farming in France.