Carrefour regrets that its announcement on Mercosur was poorly received in Brazil

Carrefour makes amends. The distributor, whose CEO Alexandre Bompard had announced that French stores would not sell meat from Mercosur, said on Tuesday that it regretted that this “was perceived as a questioning of [son] partnership with Brazilian agriculture”. “We regret that our communication was perceived as a questioning of our partnership with Brazilian agriculture and a criticism of it”declared the French distributor in a press release Tuesday on its website. He observed that his “declaration of support for the French agricultural world formulated last Wednesday on the subject of the free trade agreement with Mercosur aroused disagreements in Brazil which it is [leur] responsibility to appease.

Alexandre Bompard wrote to the majority French agricultural union FNSEA on Wednesday that the supermarket chain “would not sell any meat from Mercosur” in France, letter also published on its various social networks. The manager mentioned in this letter the “risk of spillover onto the French market of meat production not respecting its requirements and standards” and assured that his company was committed to “do not market any meat from Mercosur”. This announcement caused outrage in Brazil, where the governor of the state of Mato Grosso – an agricultural region – launched a call for a boycott of Carrefour stores on Brazilian territory. “If Brazil can’t sell you meat, then you won’t sell French products either”said the governor, Mauro Mendes, in a video published Friday on social networks. Carrefour has just over 305,000 employees in the eight countries where it directly operates stores (France, Spain, Italy, Belgium, Romania, Poland, Brazil and Argentina), and in 2023 achieved a turnover of nearly 93 billion euros. Of this total, 21.4 billion or 23% were made in Brazil.