Thirty-five poultry dealers suspected of price fixing – Le Figaro

After yogurt manufacturers, the Competition Authority is about to punish the French poultry dealers. The policeman must announce in the coming days the penalty imposed on thirty companies and four trade federations, who organized an agreement on prices.

The Competition Authority is on the trail of a cartel chicken. This week, the competition watchdog has pin 35 poultry dealers, including most importantly LDC (Praise the Gauls …), and four professional associations to an agreement on prices between 2000 and 2007, reveals Le Journal du Dimanche . The information was confirmed by different sources with the Le Figaro , but the Authority contacted, refuses to speak before the announcement of the sanction provided in the coming days.

The Authority has examined the reports of a hundred meetings organized notably through interprofessional Federation poultry (FIA). “These meetings involved thirty poultry dealers aimed to discuss ways to cope with the 30% decline in sales related to bird flu, combined with a sharp rise in grain,” says a source close to industrial . Cereals are the major component of chicken selling prices. However, if the increase in the raw material is immediately reflected by the slaughterhouse to the breeder, processing companies negotiate, they, with annual retail sales price, which does not account for fluctuations.

To make their case to the Competition Authority, industrial highlighted the fragile state of their profession. Several companies initially referred, have disappeared since the beginning of the investigation. This is the case of a subsidiary of Soft. A dozen poultry dealers from the respondent thirty risking liquidation would have indicated if significant fine. This can, in theory, up to 10% of sales but is minus in case of recognition of the facts, as most companies seem to have done. The poultry dealers also explained that practices have ceased since 2007 and especially since the consumer has not suffered from the agreement. These are the distributors who have taken care billing and they are the ones who seem to be at the origin of the survey.

If the amount is still uncertain, the fine imposed against the poultry dealers will indeed and although the fourth in the space of six months in the food sector. The Authority has denounced a cartel fine flour March, just days after imposed a fine of € 192.7 million in mid-March to nine yoghurt manufacturers. Last December, thirteen manufacturers of hygiene products (Procter & amp; Gamble, Unilever, Henkel, Colgate-Palmolive …) had already received a record fine of nearly one billion euros