Leclerc local

In this age of increasing transparency, seeing a picture of a product's grower on the packaging is nothing unusual, but one farmer in the Bouches-du-Rhône department in the south of France had cause to be surprised.

According to a story on the FreshPlaza website, the farmer spotted a photo of himself on a crate of courgettes and aubergines in retailer Leclerc, with the label stating that he was the producer of the vegetables.

The only problem was that he wasn't the producer. In fact, the farmer has apparently never produced courgettes and hasn't sold to Leclerc for three years.

'They use the image of the farmer but not his products!' complained Julie Mizoule of the department's Young Farmers Union. 'So what now can guarantee to us that such vegetables are even French?'

Leclerc has claimed that the problem occurred when the agency it was using, Terre d'Ici, prodvided the retailer with the wrong photo.