Spain has pledged to seek €71m from the European Commission in compensation for financial losses suffered by Spanish fruit and vegetable producers as a result of being wrongly linked with the German E.coli outbreak.
The country’s minister for rural affairs, Rosa Aguilar, will today (19 July) present Spain’s demand to the European Council of Agriculture Ministers in Brussels after holding a meeting with leading figures from across Andalusia’s agriculture sector.
With Andalusia having suffered an estimated 78 per cent of the total losses endured as a result of Spanish cucumbers being initially, and falsely, named as the source of the E.coli crisis, Aguilar met with fresh produce groups from the region in Almeria on 18 July to receive a full account.
At an industry summit attended by Aguilar and her Andalusia counterpart, Clara Aguilera, fresh produce sector representatives including associations Fepex, Hortyfruta, Asaja and Coag revealed that some 2,421ha of production had been affected by the crisis.
The meeting also revealed that some 18,500 tonnes of fruits and vegetables had been removed from sale and destroyed as a result of the collapse in prices following the German allegation.
Following the summit, Francisco Iglesias, general secretary of the Union of Small Farmers (UPA) called on the European Commission to expand its list of products entitled to receive compensation to include melons and watermelons, which he said had been badly affected.
