Angry French farmers are complaining about unfair competition from foreign producers, TF1 reports. Ukrainian chicken, which costs half as much as French chicken due to more lenient production requirements, has come under fire for their criticism. The French also complain about Moroccan tomato producers with cheap labour and German beetroot producers who are allowed to use insecticides.
French roosters are furious. Chicken producers are complaining about prices they consider unfair. For example, three euros for a kilo of Ukrainian chicken and seven for a kilo of French chicken. But Europe is allowing these imports to support Kiev’s war effort.
FARMER: Imports have a right to exist, but they must meet the same standards as our production.
Let’s take production standards. In France, farms can keep up to 40,000 chickens, while in Ukraine they are entire factories that raise up to two million.
The same goes for the tomatoes in your fridge. What can a French vegetable grower do against the expanding crop market in Spain? On shop shelves you can see an eye-opening price comparison for cherry tomatoes. 11.63 euros for French, 7.96 euros for Spanish and 6.23 euros for Moroccan.
CORRESPONDENT: Do you ever pay attention to where the tomatoes come from?
BUYER: Not now. I used to, but now I take the cheaper ones.
In this case, the competition concerns the cost of labour: €1 per hour in Morocco, €6 per hour in Spain and €14 in France.
Sugar beet producers are also angry. After all, Guillaume suffers from competition that he considers unfair, even within the EU. For example, German producers are allowed to use insecticides that are banned in France.
Guillaume VULLEN, beet grower: What we want at the European level is simply consistency. Because if we have to grow vegetables properly, then we all need to be on an equal footing.
And all this while the French industry is already struggling. In the last five years, five sugar mills have closed down in the country.
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