The farmers’ strike will continue. There is more and more talk about citizen inspections of border crossings and supermarkets, where, according to many, food products from Ukraine are becoming more and more common.
- Consumers have a choice. Agricultural organizations encourage people to choose Polish products in supermarkets
- According to many opinions, in Polish stores you can find more and more Ukrainian food products
More food products from Ukraine in Poland
Relations between Poland and Ukraine are tense to the extreme. Just yesterday, Monika Chlebosz reported on farmer.pl about an incident of insulting the Polish flag by Ukrainian citizens. Emotions are already high on both sides, but it is the Polish side that is injured in this situation. No one reacts and the situation escalates in a dangerous direction. Meanwhile, there are reports from many quarters that there are more food products from Ukraine in retail chains.
The Wielkopolska Chamber of Agriculture announces social control of agricultural products on its Facebook fanpage. Such “people’s” control of the border is already underway, so agricultural chambers are joining the campaign to defend Polish products against Ukrainian agri-food products.
We can easily find offers of agricultural products from Ukraine on advertising portals. There is flour straight from Ukraine, there is rapeseed oil. It is impossible to ignore the issue of business ethics in such offers. Do we miss Polish rapeseed and cereals? Do we have nothing to produce from?
It is difficult to find out whether we have a Polish or Ukrainian product
More initiatives are emerging. Farmers want to block the distribution centers of retail chains. But that’s not the end. In recent days, there has been information that Ukrainian food products are increasingly available on supermarket shelves. And in fact – you don’t have to look for long. At this point, things have gone so far that no one really knows what is produced in Poland, but still from Ukrainian agricultural produce. On the Internet we can already find photos of products manufactured in Poland, but by companies that are on the list of companies purchasing raw materials from Ukraine circulating on the Internet. So is this a Polish or Ukrainian product?
Product marking should be introduced as soon as possible, but not with “Mada in Poland” or “Made in Poland” or “Made in the EU”. Polish products should have additional markings and logos – produced from Polish agricultural products (cereals, milk, rapeseed, etc.). Last year, we wrote about such a solution on farmer.pl. However, it must be controlled. It should be a certified logo to prevent fraud in this matter. The minimum solution is information on the packaging in what percentage the product was made from Polish agricultural produce.
Agricultural produce from Ukraine is everywhere – won’t we find out the whole truth?
But again, things have come a long way. We are receiving information about phenomena such as mixing Polish and German grain of good quality with goods from Ukraine. Farmers, but also drivers who see what is happening during transshipment, emphasize that Ukrainian goods of much lower quality are mixed with very good raw material and then it can meet the parameters. In such a situation, how can we fight for the identity of domestic products, if in order to improve the quality of goods from the East, domestic grain is mixed with Ukrainian grain? We also know that there were situations where such mixed grain returned to the country because it was rejected by subsequent buyers. And then the grain remained in the country.
Even if Ukrainian goods did not stay in Poland in some situations, they often went abroad as grain of Polish origin. This applies not only to cereals, but also to rapeseed and sunflower. Abroad, Polish goods were considered to be of poor quality, while this quality was spoiled by the admixture of Ukrainian raw materials (or, in extreme situations, entirely Ukrainian goods sold as Polish).
So whether we are dealing with a Polish product is not a one-to-one thing. Unfortunately, it is regrettable that many products marked with production in Poland may not have actually been produced from domestic raw materials. This cannot be stated because the issue of what happened to Ukrainian agricultural produce in Poland is still being clarified. One can only assume. We may not know the whole truth for a long time.
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