Farmers are not getting the benefit of the high prices being charged for food but consumers are paying their money to "middlemen", mainly retailers such as Tesco, Dunnes and Superquinn, Fine Gael claimed yesterday.
The party's agriculture spokesman, Deputy Denis Naughten, launching a new campaign on food "rip-offs" yesterday in Grafton Street, Dublin, claimed that most of the high prices were going to the retailers.
A Fine Gael survey of a shopping basket of beef, milk, eggs and a range of vegetables showed that the farmer gets €8.78 while the consumer pays €20.89 in the supermarkets, a mark-up of 137 per cent.
The Roscommon deputy said the highest mark-up was on milk, which retails at an average of 85 cent per litre while the farmer gets just 27 cent, a mark-up of 214 per cent. "This is a disgrace, even allowing for processing costs. But consumers must be noticing that the price they pay is more or less consistent through the supermarkets."
Mr Naughten said cabbage was marked up from the 55 cent the farmer gets to an average of €1.52 paid by the consumer, a mark-up of 176 per cent on a product that required no further processing.
He said the research showed a dozen eggs was costing the consumer €3.56, a mark-up of 169 per cent on the farmer price of €1.32.
"This basket of food mainly includes products which require little or no processing, yet between the producer and the consumer, the products are being marked up by 137 per cent on average," he said.
"Superquinn is guilty of both the highest individual mark-up of 256 per cent on a kilo of beef and the highest overall mark-up of 157 per cent on the basket of goods. The retailer with the next highest mark-up was Dunnes, at 135 per cent, followed by Tesco at 120 per cent," Mr Naughten said.
"Consumers need to know why they have to pay these high mark-ups, and farmers deserve to know why they are not getting better prices."
He said retailers were continuing to make huge profits from the Irish market at the expense of both consumers and farmers, with the consequence that quality Irish food was being undermined and farmers were at risk of going out of business.
The vegetable prices were taken from the CSO and Dublin Wholesale Market Prices, as well as the Department of Agriculture and the Irish Food Board. They were taken on July 4th.
The supermarket prices for Tesco and Superquinn came from online internet shopping lists, with Dunnes Stores' prices based on its St Stephen's Green outlet.