French Fruit Fraud Exposed: Wholesaler Jailed for Mislabeling Foreign Produce

It all started with a report from the Zone interdite TV program, aired in 2022 on M6. It revealed that the company Fruits rouges du Périgord had "Frenchified" 412 tons of foreign fruits, including raspberries, blueberries, gooseberries, blackberries, blackcurrants, chestnuts and kiwis, mainly imported from Morocco, Portugal and the Netherlands, and more marginally from Guatemala, between 2020 and 2021. It then resold its products to large and medium-sized retail chains throughout the country. The volumes sold represent 5% of the annual French production of red fruits, the equivalent of more than 1.5 million euros in turnover, estimates the agricultural union Coordination rurale.

"This deceptive business practice consists of presenting as French products that are not, by falsifying their origin labeling," states the Directorate General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF) in a press release. And the company Fruits rouges du Périgord paid the price. According to the fraud repression department, it was sentenced on Monday to one year’s suspended imprisonment and a fine of 50,000 euros instead of a fine of 150,000 euros as requested by the public prosecutor’s office for "fraud".

By decision of the commercial court, the company Fruits rouges du Périgord was liquidated in August 2023.

Last year, nearly 10,000 checks were carried out across the country by the DGCCRF, "revealing anomalies in about 30% of cases," the Ministry of Agriculture said. The fraud repression services intend to maintain "strong control pressure on this subject this year," where the persistent discontent of French farmers in the face of competition from certain foreign products persists.