Germany’s prolonged problem with pesticides has been well documented here and elsewhere. Since the issue surfaced several years ago, it has managed to tie the German fresh produce trade in knots, brought muddled thinking on the part of government and concentrated even more power in the hands of a pressure group.
Now it seems poised to take a dangerous new turn. Collar any German trader for a comment and even the most mild-mannered among them will pepper his reply with any number of well-worn expletives. But for once all the ominous talk of 'Katastrophe' is not mere hyperbole. The doomsayers out there warn that something like a perfect storm seems to be gathering high above the Federal Republic.
The European Parliament's recent ruling to reinforce EU pesticide rules that came into force last September was the first sign of the storm clouds on the horizon. Edeka, Germany’s largest food retailer with 12,000 stores and expected sales in 2009 of an eye-watering €43bn, announced last month that it would be writing to around 1,000 of its suppliers at home and abroad to advise them of a new approved pesticides list it has drawn up with the Freiburg Institute of Applied Ecology.
Not only will pesticides henceforth be labelled with its own traffic-light system – red, amber or green, to indicate whether pesticides could or could not be used – but Edeka also expects its suppliers to deliver produce that more than meets the new norms, undercutting them by some 50 per cent.
Furthermore, Edeka chairman Markus Mosa said the company would be taking some 20,000 samples in 2009 to add to a pesticides database that it started last year and which is already bulging with some 12,500 records. Twenty suppliers have been delisted as a result, he said.
Greenpeace, which has been happily fanning the flames of a fire it started several years ago when it accused German retailers of playing fast and loose with pesticide residues, put out a statement which took to task Europe’s retailers at large for failing to enforce the same high standards as Edeka.
This immediately raised the stakes for every retailer. In Germany, there are some who are rumoured to be preparing their own specifications which undercut those of the German market leader. Lidl is expected to make an announcement some time very soon.
So suppliers to the German market are now caught between a rock and hard place. On the one hand, they’re uncertain what pesticides they can and cannot use, and on the other hand they cannot be absolutely sure that any one of their retail customers will suddenly revise downwards the MRL specifications they apply. To hedge their bets, local growers have even resorted to planting less, it seems.
Although shoppers have yet to see the consequences on their supermarket shelves, the danger exists that in an effort to hold on to market share Germany’s retailers will compete against one another on pesticides. It risks huge confusion for the consumer and likely financial catastrophe for the grower.
In today’s market conditions, no-one can afford that.
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