The pressure against Spanish fruit and vegetables in France seems to be moving from the producers' pickets to the controls of the agents of the French Anti-Fraud Department, who have recently been intensifying their surveillance on the roads to determine the traceability of the Spanish products transported by truck. The objective of this measure is to determine whether all the paperwork is in order and thus prevent the products from being sold as French. All goods with any faults in this sense are being seized.
According to the French publication franceblue.fr, several checks have been carried out on the A7 motorway between Avignon and Orange last Sunday, 6 August, on trucks passing through the area, most of them Spanish. The agents were led by Michel Malaval Vaucluse, head of the fraud control department.
The agenda of the day was to ensure that the EU regulations on traceability for summer fruits and vegetables were respected and that the origin of the products indicated in the invoice met the European standards.
Ángel, a Spanish truck driver who was stopped for one of these inspections, told the French publication that "in France, there are many controls. France and Germany are the countries where there are more controls in general," he said when the agents of the DGCCRF proceeded to examine the documentation provided to the driver by the Spanish producers. Everything seemed to be in order, except for the invoice.
This documentation does not point to the Spanish origin of the nectarines transported. "Either this is a mistake or something deliberate," explains Michel Malaval, head of the department of consumer fraud in Vaucluse, who explained that this can lead to "these Spanish nectarines reaching the food chain as a French product. A trick that, although not frequent, has been often reported."
Once such a case has been identified by the Fraud department, the services of the DGCCRF in Rungis are immediately contacted by their counterparts in Vaucluse to check on the fruit's buyer and determine whether it is indeed a mistake and not a fraud scheme. The Vaucluse also sends a report to the Spanish services so that they pay a visit to the seller. However, French officials, without saying it openly, do not believe that this operation will be done.
The possibility of selling Spanish products as French is also causing distress amongst French growers, who talk about unfair competition. In June, Vaucluse producers carried out these types of checks themselves, which led to goods from Spain being dumped directly on the road without prior warning.
Source: agroinformacion.com
