The differences between primary producers and the processing industry in the dairy sector have recurred in recent years, especially after the end of the European milk quotas, when it is time to renew the purchase contracts and set the price at which raw milk will be purchased. in origin. However, these debates have had a singular scenario this Wednesday: the Third Administrative Litigation Chamber of the Supreme Court, which has chosen a session of the judicial process to settle the appeal presented by the National Federation of Dairy Industries (Fenil) against Royal Decree 374/2022 that regulates the contracting conditions in this activity.
A delegation from the UPA, headed by the Secretary General of the Agrarian Unions-UPA Galicia Roberto García, has appeared before the High Court to present expert reports to the magistrates to “shield” the Agri-Food Chain Law that he believes is being questioned in This process. From this agrarian organization they have criticized that the dairy industries are the only ones that have taken this step and accuse Fenil of wanting to “dismantle” the reformed norm at the end of 2021. An extreme that, in this employer’s association, they categorically deny.
García (Agrarian Unions-UPA Galicia) has defended the prohibition of the Food Chain Law to sell raw milk, at source, at a loss as an element “adjusted to law that must remain fully in force.” In this sense, he has attacked the manufacturing industry, which he accuses of “exercising a seigneur’s right” and of “imposing prices on the lowest echelon, as they have been doing since the year 2000.” In this sense, he recalled that in Spain today there are just over 10,000 cattle farms compared to the 60,000 that existed at the beginning of the century. In his opinion, the industry wants to continue imposing prices without taking into account production costs or the market situation “as they are doing again in the contracts that are being renewed since last April.”
From this employer, in a statement to this medium, they decline to make assessments on the status of the appeal “in order not to hinder the ongoing judicial process” but they do justify the decision to appeal this regulation – which comes to adapt certain aspects of the Agrifood Chain Law – in “the clear insecurity” of this regulation for the value chain (livestock farmers, cooperatives and industries). In his opinion, the key is “in the impossibility of determining the effective production costs of each individual farmer” as established by the Royal Decree and which finds its support in the general prohibition of remunerating primary producers below ruined costs. in the Chain Law. For Fenil, this is impossible “in a sector of continuous production and whose daily costs can vary from day to day, month to month, quarter to quarter, throughout the same contract.”
