Imported berries and mushrooms passed off asFinnish products

Desundial · Post by **Desundial** » Sun Sep 05, 2010 2:55 pm

Buyer beware. Can you tell Finnish berries and mushrooms apart from foreign - when they don't have the sign? According to this Helsingin sanomat archive article wholesalers are taking advantage of shoppers faith in Finnish products - just when the price premium in the markets for 'Finnish' also seems to go up every year.

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ajdias · Post by **ajdias** » Mon Sep 06, 2010 12:37 am

Desundial wrote:Can you tell Finnish berries and mushrooms apart from foreign - when they don't have the sign?

The article and the continuous fraud imply that most buyers can not tell them apart - in which case they are paying a premium for a superfluous attribute of the berries. Since they are not aware of the fraud they are getting a fair deal.

Or even better, the influx of foreign berries is likely to drive prices down

The ones who get the bad deal are consumers who can tell them apart...

Desundial · Post by **Desundial** » Sat Sep 11, 2010 6:58 pm

I used to also think the influx of foreign berries would drive the prices down, but after reading the article I think it will just increase the margins for the traders - lots of cheap inventories passed off at inflated "grown in suomi" prices

....

oh well, only in strawberries can I come close to telling the difference. maybe I should just buy non-finnish from now on and see how that goes

FinnGuyHelsinki · Post by **FinnGuyHelsinki** » Sat Sep 11, 2010 7:41 pm

There's one very easy solution to that; don't buy from markets. There's no guarantee that they (vegetables, berries,...) are any fresher than in a grocery store, which can sell for a lower price (as they can buy wholesale). A day or two won't matter anyway. If you know the seller, no problem, but if not (as the news story says), there's no telling where they're from. Fresh fish on the market has a selling point of being fresh (location too, but if fresh, can't be that far away), so if you can tell that, you're fine. Of course the Finnish forests are free for anyone to roam and pick berries and mushrooms, and if you're not into it yourself, with a bit of luck you know/can find someone that is and is willing to sell you some.

DC21 · Post by **DC21** » Fri Sep 17, 2010 9:37 am

Forest picking isn't so easy this year because of the dry weather.. most berries and mushrooms are no good.

EP · Post by EP » Fri Sep 17, 2010 12:36 pm

most berries and mushrooms are no good

Too late for berries anyway. But mushrooms popped up a week ago. Nights have been warm and it has rained so the threads have not died. Yesterday was a Black Trumpet Day.

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