Uruguayan butchers, consumers and producers filed a lawsuit before the Consumer Defense Unitin an unprecedented joint action against the competition regulatory body, arguing that the Minerva-Marfrig operation could have a direct impact on consumers of meat.
The Union of Meat Sellers (UVC), One Uruguay and the Uruguayan Consumer Defense League They asked the Commission for the Promotion and Defense of Competition not to authorize the Brazilian Minerva to purchase the three slaughter plants of the Marfrig refrigerator.
The three actors resolved to undertake collective legal action to formally request that said purchase not be enabled, understanding that it would represent “a serious impact on competition” and that this “can undoubtedly generate damage throughout the meat chain and in access to a basic product in the family basket,” as they expressed in a statement.
Alejandro Gorostidifrom Un Solo Uruguay, told Ambit who presented the corresponding documentation so that the body that acts in defense of competition can justify a resolution that prevents the proposed business. “What (Minerva) is doing is so big that it has to, on a mandatory basis, ask for authorization. In a reasonable manner, the competent body can say no,” he indicated.
Likewise, he stated that, if the sale were to be completed, there would be “a level of concentration that is too high in the market”, since it would imply the concentration of 61% of the installed work capacity in the country, and this could allow the Brazilian company to ” extract extraordinary monopoly-type profits”.
“We are concerned about the loss of consumer freedom of choice”
“In general terms, we are concerned about the loss of freedom, both the freedom of choice of consumers and the free competition of the various economic actors in our country,” Gorostidi added.
“The law and the regulatory decree require that the operation has to be founded, as does the denial of authorization. At this point in the game there are sufficient technical and general elements,” he remarked.
“We provide some analysis tools of the competitive structure, which show an excess of market power that whoever holds this situation would have by purchasing those three plants, which affects the interest and general well-being of all Uruguayan consumers,” concluded the representative of the One Uruguay social movement.
For its part, Edgardo Martínez Zimariofffrom the Uruguayan Consumer Defense League, maintained that other organizations and unions have already raised their objections to the business, but highlighted the particularity that their initiative, which brings together consumers, producers and butchers in the defense of free market, free competition, and “promulgating that concentration does not imply that they have power in managing supply and demand prices.”
Source: Ambito
