2024-08-29 19:32:36
It is not always immediately clear why food prices fall or rise. Now the consumer advice center is calling for a new control mechanism.
Consumer advocates have called for the establishment of an observatory for food prices. This could uncover “unfair practices” and protect consumers from excessive costs at the store counter, as the Federal Association of Consumer Organizations (vzbv) explained on Thursday. The increased prices of recent years cannot be explained solely by higher production costs.
“Food prices are like a black box. The high turnover of the food industry gives rise to the suspicion that money is being made at the expense of consumers,” criticized vzbv board member Ramona Pop. Her association is therefore calling for a central price monitoring center that records costs from the field to the supermarket shelf. This is already practice in Spain and France.
A study commissioned by the consumer protection group from the Agrarmarkt Informations-Gesellschaft (AMI) shows that much of the necessary data is already available in Germany. “In order to cover the entire value chain, the federal government should identify and close existing data gaps,” demanded the vzbv.
According to consumer advocates, the results of the price monitoring should be presented to the Bundestag in the form of an annual report. This would allow the competitive situation in the agricultural and food market to be discussed and political measures to be derived.