French Retail Food – Observations 4

My contacts with the British and Dutch markets lead me to believe that Organic and FAIRTRADE were important market movements in Europe.

What I have found is that this is clearly not the case in France. Recent news items from Britain seem to indicate that consumers who used organic products almost exclusively (Sky News 01/06/2008) are reducing their organic purchases because of the increase in food costs.

In a large supermarket visited recently

there was no organic fresh produce and only this small section of organic food was found under the health foods

Another supermarket did have a small organic fresh produce section but the products were imported from Spain and Holland. So the organic movement does not seem to be well developed, at least outside of the main centres.

On the FAIRTRADE side, most supermarkets have a few ethical and FAIRTRADE products in their coffee sections but again not in their fresh produce sections. The supermarket illustrated above only had a small ethical section, in addition to their coffees.