PARIS Food inflation in France has started to ease this month and the trend should accelerate in the coming weeks, Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said on Wednesday.

Le Maire told BFM television that there were still four or five major players in the food industry which have not complied with a government demand to cut prices, threatening to disclose their names by next week if they do not.

"To date everyone is starting to play along...you will see that during the month of July, prices will start to drop on certain products such as poultry, cereals, pasta, or oils," Le Maire said.

"We must accelerate so that by autumn the inflation spiral is broken," he added.

Last month Le Maire said he had secured a pledge from 75 food companies to cut prices on hundreds of products.

The government responded after supermarket prices hit record levels in recent months while the cost of many raw materials used by food producers declined.

While the pace of food price rises has been slowing across the euro zone, it is the main factor keeping inflation high.

(Reporting by Dominique Vidalon; editing by Benoit Van Overstraeten and Jason Neely)