BRUSSELS-The European Commission has been urged to take action to regulate the enormous powers of giant supermarket chains in Europe that exercise tremendous influence over the food retail chain, especially in relation to overseas, including Caribbean suppliers.
A petition to this effect was handed over to Phillipe Chauve, head of the Food Task Force of the competition branch of the European Commission in late June in Brussels. Signed by thousands of European consumers, the petition was handed over by Vanessa Gautier of the Make Fruit Fair campaign, a coalition of non-governmental organisations demanding that the code of practice promised by the Commission to govern the supermarket chains, be extended to cover overseas suppliers.
Gautier was accompanied by the leader of the Latin American banana workers unions, Iris Mungia, and former coordinator of WINFA, Renwick Rose. Rose, while urging the Commission to act to protect the livelihoods of tens of thousands of banana workers and farmers, made it clear that they were not "anti-supermarket."
He said British supermarkets had helped to save the banana industry in the Windward Islands by agreeing to the demands of consumers to sell Fairtrade bananas. "However, it is also true that the intense competition among the supermarket giants, their use of bananas as 'loss leaders' to attract customers to their stores by low banana prices is having negative consequences for farmers and workers," he said. In spite of the promised voluntary actions by the supermarkets, the Commission has a responsibility to act to ensure fairness in the trade between grossly unequal partners.
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