According to the UFC-Que Choisir and the peasant confederation, the law passed last year is a failure. Farmers' income has not been revalued, and prices have risen on the shelves, they say.
Passed last year, the Food Law, supposed to boost farmers' income, proved to be a failure from this point of view while at the other end of the food chain, mass retailers would have been given a "blank check", according to the UFC-Que Choisir and the Confédération paysanne.
"Large-scale distribution and industry continue to impose agricultural prices below cost prices in many sectors," say Friday the consumer association and the agricultural union in a joint statement. "While the 10% increase in the resale at a loss (SRP) threshold inflicts on consumers an inflation which should represent according to our calculations 1.6 billion euros over two years, the rebalancing of the trade negotiations so long awaited by farmers and promoted by the law (result of the General States of the food, Ed) did not take place ", estimate the two organizations. 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.
The Egalim law (or law Food) was to allow to escape an effect domino untenable: the price war between the four major retailers in France pushes them to claim tariffs always lower from their suppliers of the food industry who themselves buy the cheapest agricultural raw material from the peasants 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", the food prices underwent at the time of the entry into force of the measure (on February 1st, 2019, Ed) a "brutal increase" of more than 0.83% in just one month.
Milk and meat still bought under the production price
"This is big no matter what, these figures mean absolutely nothing," reacted in mid-day on RTL the Delegate General of the Federation of Commerce and Distribution (FCD), Jacques Creyssel, who has evoked meanwhile "+ 0.1% increase in prices over one year on major brands, + 0.3% in general". Moreover, according to the UFC and the peasant confederation, instead of moderating their margins, as they had promised "in exchange for the increase of the SRP", the industrialists and the big retailers did not keep their promise: in particular "for UHT milk, whereas since 2017 the price paid to the farmer has decreased by 5%, the margin of the distributors on the contrary increased by 8%". Finally, they 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, the cow's milk is bought 15 % below the production price and 14% meat ".
"I say it in a very clear way: there has been no price increase (but rather) an end of the deflation wanted by the authorities, a drop in promotions (…) and a return to producers" especially in the milk sector, said Creyssel.
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Source link
https://www.ladepeche.fr/2019/10/11/loi-alimentation-et-le-gagnant-estla-grande-distribution,8473679.php
