Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Gebara, for being here with us today, and thank you for your statement.
This committee has heard from many witnesses about glaring faults in the practices of grocery giants and in how they treat our farmers and producers. Walmart is already considered to be one of the worst in the industry for imposing fees on its suppliers. I've heard numbers like $900 for missing a label on a box or a bag of product, or a couple of thousand dollars for shorting an order by even two boxes. I've heard of late fines for truck drivers who were stopped because they didn't make their appointment time because they didn't have safety shoes on while they stayed in their own trucks.
It's this type of nickel-and-diming that makes Walmart stressful to do business with, and it also negatively impacts the livelihoods of those who do. When you find a wholesaler or a distributor, they can recoup those costs somewhere else down the supply chain, but a producer can't recoup costs from the dirt that it grows its food in. The buck stops with the grower and the farm family, and those are the ones who are being hit the hardest. Thankfully, the unscrupulous fee structure of megacompanies like Walmart has rightly driven attention to the need for a grocery code of conduct.
I just have a couple of quick questions to start off with, sir, and they're the same questions that I've asked the heads of the other companies—grocery giants—that have come here before committee.
Will you once and for all abolish all the fees, fines and chargebacks and pay farmers a fair price, the price that's on their invoice?