Leading Israeli fresh produce exporter Agrexco has denied reports currently circulating on the internet that two of Italy's largest supermarket operators – Coop Italia and Nordiconad – are planning to suspend purchasing of all Agrexco-Carmel products sourced from the Middle East country.
Agrexco PR manager Shira Segal Kuperman said rumours of a possible boycott by any Italian retailer were completely without foundation.
'There is no such thing,' she said. 'We are working with these companies for 50 years. We receive contacts of this sort all the time. There is a law in Italy that forbids boycotting products for political reasons, and these claims are baseless.'
Neither Coop Italia nor Nordiconad currently source products from Israel's disputed territories, but both companies were keen to point out that claims made by one group, Stop Agrexco Italy, which suggest they specifically agreed to stop sourcing Agrexco products from those regions, were untrue.
Germano Fabiani, head of fresh produce buying at Coop Italia, told Eurofruit Magazine there had been no change to the group's procurement arrangements with regard to Israeli produce.
'Imports and purchases of goods from the occupied Palestinian territories are suspended, but not goods from the whole of Israel,' he commented.
Gianluca Covili, director of Nordiconad, confirmed the rumours of a possible blanket ban on all Agrexco products at his company were false: 'We do not currently have any Israeli products in our range, but talk of a boycott is wrong.'
Protest movement
Pro-Palestinian groups recently organised public demonstrations in a number of Italian cities, calling on Italian consumers and retailers to boycott Israeli fruit and vegetables, including those marketed under Agrexco's Carmel brand.
Stop Agrexco Italy's supermarket lobbying campaign was launched in January this year after a national meeting of the Stop Agrexco coalition in Savona, where Agrexco goods are discharged from their vessels for distribution in Italy.
Those calling for a boycott insist that Agrexco is deliberately mixing produce from West Bank settlements with goods from other parts of Israel, making it impossible to trace their precise origin.
In a letter apparently sent to Agrexco's senior management, Israeli peace activism group Gush Shalom is reported to have raised similar criticism of the company.
'If you continue your policy of mixing Israeli products with settlement products, to which opposition is growing around the world, you are tangibly endangering all of Israel's agriculture exports,' the letter argued, according to the Ynet news website.
According to Ms Segal Kuperman, only 0.4 per cent of Agrexco's exports are from the West Bank and Golan Heights territories, and they are all clearly marked as such.
'There has been no change in the way we label these items,' she added.
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