Paris (France) (AFP) – “Refuge products”: this is how the foie gras and smoked salmon and trout sectors describe their products a few weeks before the end-of-year holidays, “super confident” despite (or because of?) the context of economic and geopolitical gloom.

Published on: 07/11/2026 - 12:06

“In an environment weighed down by worry and anxiety, constrained spending and inflation”, it is clear that “many indicators are green for our sector”, declared Friday Stanislas Giraud, president of the Smoked Salmon and Trout Group in France, which represents the main French smoking companies.

From January to September 2026, mass distribution sales of smoked salmon and trout showed an increase of 4.4% in volume. During the 2025 holidays, they increased by 7% over one year, a dynamism which should be repeated this year, according to the organization.

Orders placed by distributors are in fact increasing compared to the end of 2025, indicate representatives of the sector, which directly employs some 2,000 people, in SMEs or smaller companies, located away from large cities.

Professionals just hope that their products will be highlighted from the beginning of December and until mid-January (and not only during the last ten days of the year) since festive meals multiply throughout December and until after January 1, following the trend of recent years.

“When things go wrong…”

On the foie gras side, same speech and same confidence.

“When things are bad, foie gras is a safe haven,” assures Gilles Lemoine, sales director of the La Quercynoise cooperative, based in Gramat, in the Lot.

“It’s a good way to escape the ambient gloom,” adds Fabien Chevalier, president of Cifog, the foie gras inter-profession, during a press briefing this week.

The inter-professional organization is counting on 14,000 tonnes of production this year, compared to 15,000 in 2025, therefore down, but up 10% on the average of the last five years.

It must be said that the sector has been shaken by waves of avian flu since 2015. Tens of millions of poultry have been euthanized, and to break this spiral, the government has made vaccination compulsory since the fall of 2023 in farms with more than 250 ducks.

We are in the third vaccination campaign and “everything is going rather well”, indicates Marie Laborde, deputy director of Cifog.

The level of risk in France was certainly raised this week to "moderate" (compared to "negligible" previously) due to "an infection dynamic in migratory wild avifauna in neighboring countries", according to the decree published in the Official Journal. But it is above all a question of “strengthening surveillance and prevention measures”.

No exports to the United States

Avian flu and vaccination have pushed Japan to ban exports of French foie gras in 2023 because this country, the main export market, fears low-noise circulation of the virus on farms. Cifog is “working hard” on this issue, which is progressing “slowly but surely”, indicated its president.

On the other hand, the ban on the sale of foie gras in Washington, voted for by referendum by the inhabitants of the capital this week, does not affect French producers at all: France does not export foie gras to the United States, due to the high costs that approval from American veterinary services would entail.

France is the leading producer and consumer of this gastronomic specialty and has some 3,000 producers, mainly in Occitanie and New Aquitaine but also in Pays-de-la-Loire, Brittany and Alsace.

Another point in common between foie gras and smoked salmon: if prices will be stable, or even slightly lower, for consumers this year, it is likely to be different next year.

Because it will surely be necessary to pass on the increase in oil prices in 2026, which will increase the costs of transport, packaging, and even animal feed (soy and protein crops for fish, corn for poultry). “It is unlikely that 2027 will see the same prices,” according to Fabien Chevalier.

© 2026 AFP

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