The seizure of watermelons, extra virgin olive oil, wine and artichokes from abroad which would have ended up on the tables as Italian food is good, yet another scam to the detriment of consumers, with now unsustainable effects on the incomes of Apulian farmers caught between the increase in costs of production, the crazy climate and the massive import of products from abroad passed off as Italian. Coldiretti Puglia applauds the operation conducted by the Guardia di Finanza of the Gallipoli Company and by the Inspectors of the Department of the Central Inspectorate for Quality Control and Fraud Repression of Agri-food Products of the Masaf – ICQRF Puglia and Basilicata Office, which led to the seizure of 9 tons of watermelons, 2 tons of artichokes, 1,500 liters of oils and 300 liters of wine of foreign origin without traceability of the food, when there has been a 75% increase in 10 years of food imported into Puglia from non-EU countries, with Coldiretti launching the collection of one million signatures for a popular initiative European law proposal on the transparency of what we import.
“The tightening of controls is fundamental in the ports, where there are huge daily landings of foreign wheat, from Putin’s wheat to Turkish wheat but also Canadian wheat dried with glyphosate, also intercepting triangulations, considering that already in 2023 imports of Russian and Turkish wheat have increased respectively by +1164% and +798%, according to an analysis by the Divulga Study Center, a phenomenon never recorded in the history of our country, for which the prices of Italian wheat have collapsed by 60% on values below production costs which put the future of thousands of agricultural companies at risk”, says Alfonso Cavallo, president of Coldiretti Puglia.
“From Egyptian artichokes to grapes and oranges from South Africa, never has so much foreign food arrived in Puglia which is the first southern region for imports of agricultural and agri-food products from non-EU countries with an increase of 66% in 2023 which have reached almost 3 billion kilograms of agricultural products compared to 1.7 billion in 2022, an unfair competition to the agri-food production of the area and to the incomes of farmers”, adds the regional director Pietro Piccioni.
But there are also subsidized trade agreements that bring into Italy products grown often with the use of pesticides banned in the European Union – reports Coldiretti – which create unfair competition with Italian products, depress the prices paid to producers and represent a threat for the health of citizens. They range from Asian rice which is grown using tricyclazole, a powerful pesticide banned in the European Union since 2016, but enters Italy thanks to the zero duty, to Canadian lentils, also dried with glyphosate, which represent 2/3 of the total imported into our country. Then there are Egyptian oranges, the subject of notifications from the Rassf, the EU rapid alert system, due to the presence of Chlorpyrifos, a pesticide banned in the European Union since 2020; Turkish hazelnuts which are also accused by the United States Department of Labor of being grown with the exploitation of child labor; Argentine lemons grown using pesticides including propiconazole, banned since 2019. Without forgetting Chinese tomato paste which costs half as much as the Italian one thanks to the exploitation of political prisoners and drives down the prices of the national product.
Foreign foods and drinks are over ten times more dangerous than those made in Italy, with the number of agri-food products with irregular chemical residues exceeding the legal limits which in Italy was equal to 6.4% in imported products, compared to the average of 0.6% of samples of national origin, according to data from the latest report published by EFSA in 2023 relating to national data on pesticide residues.
There is a need for a clear stop to the entry of products from outside the EU borders that do not respect the standards that farmers in Italy must respect – concludes Coldiretti – guaranteeing the principle of reciprocity of the rules, since this unfair competition puts the health of the farmers at risk. citizens and the survival of agricultural businesses.
