Imported fruits and vegetables are increasingly being offered in Poland as domestic products. Retailers do this to sell potatoes from the Netherlands, cabbage from Kazakhstan, onions from Austria or apples from Serbia, which affects Polish farmers.

“This is a big problem now,” said Lukasz Sosnowski, an agricultural producer from Mount Kalwaria (Piaseczyński poviat, Mazowieckie Voivodeship). It, like others, is finding it increasingly difficult to compete in price with mass imports.

Checks showed that every third store had marketing disruptions. Every tenth batch of food was labeled incorrectly, and foreign products were sold as Polish.

“Incorrect or missing information about the country of origin is misleading consumers,” explains Tomasz Hrostny, vice president of UOKiK.

According to Polish manufacturers, the issue is not limited to large retail stores. Imported fruits and vegetables are also sold in the markets. They arrive in Poland by truck, and then repackaged by wholesalers and sold to retailers as domestic products.

But how is it possible that imported potatoes, peppers or tomatoes are cheaper than Polish in high season? This year, due to dry weather, prices for Polish vegetables are higher. Speculators prefer to bring them from countries where they are cheaper than in Poland.

Producers also pay close attention to growing imports from outside the European Union. “Russian potatoes are sold on the Polish market. It is imported without any phytosanitary controls.

The situation with industrial apples coming from Serbia and other countries is the same. We took them for examination, and four pesticides that were banned in the EU were discovered, ”says Sosnowski.