“There is no scam on these products,” replied the boss of the ociation of food manufacturers, stressing also that “distributors have accepted these products as such”.
A new front in the battle between distributors and manufacturersaround what is called the “shrinkflation“. Consider the little scheme of the agrifood giants consisting in reducing the quantity of a product while keeping the price the same, or even increasing it. If the government, through the voice of Bruno Le Maire, has promised to tackle the phenomenon, Carrefour has decided to take the lead.
Guest on the show “C in the airon France 5 on Wednesday evening, the CEO of the brand Alexandre Bompard announced that, “starting Monday“, in all its stores, there would be”a label on the products on which we have shrinkflation, which will say: this product has seen its container drop and its price increase“. “That way, we’ll have the most reliable information possible for consumers, because it’s unacceptable to do that for the consumer.“, he tackled.
Industrialists are offended. Jean-Philippe André, head of the National ociation of Food Industries (Ania), wanted to respond to Alexandre Bompard this Thursday morning on RTL. “It is not because someone says something exaggerated, even coming from a person of quality like Mr. Bompard, that it becomes true“replied the one who is also chairman of the executive board of Haribo France. For the industrialist,there is no scam on these products“. “To say that there is a scam is very hypocriticalhe lambasted. Distributors have accepted these products as such.»
Read alsoFood inflation: tough negotiations ahead between distributors and manufacturers
“A scam” for Bruno Le Maire
Moreover, according to Jean-Philippe André, shrinkflation remains an uncommon practice. “The list that was published 2-3 days ago concerns 41 food products. You have 20,000 food references in a supermarket, we are talking about 0.2%“, he reframed. This probably refers to the list of 122 products affected by the phenomenon and recently released by BFM TV. On the other hand, the boss of Ania was favorable to “further improve consumer information“.
On Franceinfo this Thursday, Bruno Le Maire persisted and signed. For him, theshrinkflation” East “a scam, it’s outrageous“. The Minister for the Economy has confirmed that the bill which will be presented at the beginning of October, aiming in particular to advance negotiations between manufacturers and distributors, will include “a provision that will force manufacturers to display the reduction in content very visibly when they keep the same packaging“. The government will also contact the National Consumer Council on these practices, had indicated the tenant of Bercy to the JT of 13H of France 2 last week.