The polemic over the increasing disparity between farm gate and retail prices for a number of unprocessed food products in Spain has prompted the government there to consider the radical move of introducing dual labelling for a number of products.
A number of consumer and farm groups in Spain have called on the Madrid authorities to take this radical step following the unusually steep (and, many would argue, illegal) increases in retail prices for a number of fruit and vegetable products in September.
The retail trade has defended the price increases, blaming the hot weather in the summer for lower harvests, in turn leading to higher prices. But the price increase in Spain has been shown to be far greater than in other countries affected by the heat wave, prompting the government to begin an investigation into whether the retail trade there colluded on price fixing.
Miguel Arias Cañete, Spain's agriculture minister, said this week that the authorities were also taking seriously the calls for dual labels on non-processed products such as fruit, vegetables and fish.
"We are investigating which products could benefit from dual labels in the immediate future and for which ones it would take a little more time to implement, given the complexity of the food chain," he said.
The initial plan, according to Arias Cañete, is to introduce dual labelling for products such as fruit, vegetables and fish which undergo virtually no processing at all. For products such as meat, however, the project is much more complicated, as they go through a number of different phases between the farm and the store, making it far harder to estimate the real cost of the product.
"There are some products which the retail chains buy directly from co-operatives, making it very easy to see exactly how much the product cost compared to how much it is sold for," the minister said. He was, however, unable to confirm exactly when any dual labelling system would be in place, saying simply that his department would act "as quickly as possible".
Cañete said that a similar system was already in place in France, and that his department would be examining the problems encountered by the legislators there. Food price inflation is a major problem in Spain, with prices rising by 8 per cent above the European average in the last seven years - in turn reducing the competitiveness of the country's food industry compared to its counterparts elsewhere.
The retail trade has long been seen as the culprit, with the pressure exerted by the major players such as Carrefour, Auchan/Alcampo and Ahold on suppliers seen as pushing farm gate prices down without any subsequent reduction in consumer prices.