Bigard and Cooperl, the two largest pork processors in France, withdrew from the reference wholesale market Marché du Porc Breton (MPB) on Monday.
They are protesting against government-backed efforts to raise producer prices in the wake of recent farmers’ protests, which the processors’ business federation SNIV-SNCP has described as “an economic disaster lethal to the industry”.
Farmer-owned co-op Cooperl wrote to MPB to say that it would buy only its members’ animals and remain absent from the open market until further notice. France’s leading meat processor Bigard adopted a similar course of action.
Each company slaughters around 4.7m pigs annually.
In June, the French government presided over an industry-wide agreement to bring farmgate prices up from €1.30/kg to the producer cost of €1.40/kg, which has now been reached.
In a letter to its members, however, Cooperl slammed the price increased as “a short-term political decision” and said that France’s competitors had dropped their prices in the meantime. “Today, we are 25c/kg above the German price and 35c/kg above the Dutch price,” the co-op’s chairman Patrice Drillet and managing director Emmanuel Commault wrote.
French pigmeat processors are now demanding in-depth structural reforms including EU-wide harmonisation of labour and environmental regulations on farms and in factories.
SHARING OPTIONS