On the shelves of European supermarkets, you can also find diluted olive oil
Poland's Gazeta Prawna calls what is happening "food racism," Hungary's Magyar Idök asks, "Second-class food for a second-class country?" and the Bulgarian tabloid "24 Chasa" calls for "resistance of poor Europe against low-quality food."
As "Russkaya Germaniya" notes, local politicians share the press's outrage. "This is unacceptable and humiliating," says Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico about the supply of lower-quality products to the EU's east. His Hungarian counterpart Viktor Orbán is convinced that double standards flourish in the EU's food industry, and the EU's east is lower on the priority list than the west.
Such complaints have arisen before among Eastern European consumers and in the press, but for the first time, they are being voiced by officials, and from several countries at once. A call to fight these double standards was made at a meeting of the Visegrad Four (Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary), and later Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Croatia, and Greece joined the demands. In the future, the Baltic states may also support the "food resistance."
It started in Slovakia, where in mid-February, data from testing 22 identical branded food products purchased in Slovak and Austrian supermarkets was made public. The difference turned out to be noticeable—the quality of more than half of the Western products was higher. Slovak Minister of Agriculture Gabriela Matečná confirmed the hypothesis of the existence of identical first- and second-class products, reminding that "having two classes of consumers within the EU is unacceptable." Simultaneously, a comparison of 24 types of products was published in Hungary.
Talk of discrimination against Eastern European consumers is supported by politicians from almost all countries east of Germany, demanding that Brussels unconditionally introduce uniform norms and rules. However, the evidence base for the accusations is weak. The Slovak study did find more fish in fish sticks sold in Austria, more meat in ham, and more tea and larger leaves in tea bags.
However, other test results were based more on subjective feelings: experts claimed that Austrian mozzarella is whiter and that waffles sold in Austria crunch better. The Hungarian test shares similar conclusions: local cola tastes worse, chocolate cream is less tender, and cocoa smells less like cocoa. Moreover, the products were compared with Austrian ones two years ago.
Manufacturers resolutely reject the claims, criticizing the testing methodology. Representatives of the discount chain Lidl and the food concern Nestlé stated that their products for Western and Eastern Europe are made according to the same recipe and standards. Even a number of Eastern European media outlets mockingly call the fight against double standards in the food industry a "food revolution," accusing the politicians who started it of cheap populism.
Consumer rights advocates are cautious about the comparisons: the problem may indeed exist, but serious research to rely on is lacking. Overall, according to the same consumer rights advocates, the supply of low-quality products with an abundance of additives and preservatives in the markets of Eastern European countries is much higher than in the West, while fresh, high-quality healthy food is much less available and significantly more expensive.
PROFIT – LIKE IN DRUG TRAFFICKING
The complaints from Eastern Europe are so unsubstantiated that for now, manufacturers are willing to turn a blind eye. But powerful food concerns regularly face another nontrivial problem—food counterfeiting, and not just of branded products. Artificial rice or "bootleg" olive oil are far from as rare as a Western consumer accustomed to good quality might think.
Experts from the Federal Office of Consumer Protection (Bundesamt für Verbraucherschutz) are convinced that organized crime is involved in this business. "Profits in this area can rival those from drug or human trafficking," says the head of the agency, Helmut Tschiersky, citing criminal statistics.
Examples of food counterfeiting cited by consumer rights advocates include diluted olive oil, the addition of flavorings to wines, and palm oil with dyes used in cooking fats. The latest hit in the field of edible (or rather, barely edible) fakes is rice and glass noodles (funchoza) that appeared on the Indian market: instead of grain and rice flour, they are made of plastic, which obviously turned out to be cheaper for the criminals than creating a fake from normal products.
The problems a consumer faces when encountering counterfeit food products can be completely different. If diluted olive oil is simply a lower-quality product for which you have to overpay (10 out of 24 varieties of olive oil from German supermarkets received a "poor" rating in a test conducted this winter by Stiftung Warentest), then other fakes or incorrectly stated product composition can be dangerous to health: for example, replacing hazelnuts with peanuts, not indicated on the packaging, could be a disaster for an allergy sufferer.
The fight against counterfeit food products is a complex process, says the head of the consumer rights protection society. Whistleblowers capable of reporting violations are virtually deprived of legal protection: an employee who intends to expose their dishonest employer will most likely lose their job and may be prosecuted by law, while holding the company itself, which manipulates recipes, accountable will be significantly more difficult.