At the moment, pig farmers (éleveurs de porcs) only get €1.30 per kilo of meat. The price is at rock bottom and farmers are furious.
Yesterday, sixty unhappy pig farmers visited 4 supermarkets in and around St Brieuc in Brittany and took off the shelves all products (pre-packed ham, patés, sausages, etc) that didn’t have the mention « Viande de Porc Française » or « Origine France ».
Pig farmers have been asking supermarkets to promote French pigs and they have not kept their promises.
Looking at the photos of OuestFrance (see link here), there were not a lot of items left on the shelves!!
Hopefully local supermarkets will change their attitude as we know how bad French strikes can be!
France is part of the European Community and so are open to produce from other member countries; Supermarkets are a commercial enterprise that needs to make profits; Consumers tend (especially during tough times) to favour lower priced products. All of these combine to make life difficult for producers who cannot reduce their costs to a level that give them sufficient profitability for their their capital investment and cost of labour.
ReplyDeleteThis is unfortunate, but I'm not convinced that ransacking supermarkets is going to win them much support.
Local sourcing is great for the planet, but is logistically difficult for the supermarkets to implement. If supermarkets could overcome this issue and devolve their buying and transportation to the regions, this could lead to a far more efficient system - fresher food, lower fuel costs, lower prices, happier customers, happier suppliers etc. The problem with this though, is that France has a long history of industrial dispute, so if you were a supermarket owner would you want to put complete reliance on a local solution?
A bit of work to do for both sides I think!
From Martin Jarvis
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