THE BIG CANNERS PULL A SLICK TRICK
Sheridan, Mary
The Big Canners Pull A Slick Trick By MARY SHERIDAN ONE of the little reported weaknesses of the new price control legislation is the setback to grade labeling in connection with the prices of new...
...The Council thinks so...
...As a result, Government specifications and standards on processed fruits and vegetables which were not in "general use in the trade" prior to the new OPA Act are banned...
...Grade labeling opponents argue that Government grading of canned goods according to A, B, and C quality and the restrictive controls of OPA tend to crush canners and limit the freedom of canning enterprise...
...the same store carried 35 brands of canned peas—and before the war it carried six...
...to the benefit of consumers...
...Too much confusion...
...Is there any conclusion to be drawn here...
...5 issue) attacking Government grade labeling as an undercover campaign to uproot the American Way might be surprised by the results of a recent consumer survey by the National Consumer-Retailer Council...
...The Big Canners Pull A Slick Trick By MARY SHERIDAN ONE of the little reported weaknesses of the new price control legislation is the setback to grade labeling in connection with the prices of new canned goods...
...In those 20 food chains, there were, the National Consumer-Retailer Council found, more than four times as many packers' brands of tomatoes stocked as in the pre-war period, and the number of brands of canned peas had about tripled...
...The canners, led by the National Canners Association, are back of this slick maneuver which will enable the canning interests to collect Grade A prices for Grade C goods...
...If this amendment got the airing it deserves in the nation's press, I think it might help the cause of grade labeling— make more people conscious of the sensible Tightness of Federal grading of quality in cans for the protection of everyone's purse...
...Private canning brands are doing alright...
...This amendment sounds harmless enough, but its punch, as in many good sentences and paragraphs", is at the end...
...Brands Are Multiplying Incidentally, those who swallowed whole that Saturday Evening Post article by Edmond F. Maher ("Customer's Nightmare," in the Feb...
...As far as I know, however, this is only wishful talk, halted by the realization that War Mobilization Director James Byrnes, "the Home Front President," would undoubtedly oppose any such "radical" step to protect consumers from being gouged by the canners...
...There has been some talk about a move to persuade the President to take over, under the War Powers Act, the 1944 canning pack and compel the application of Government AMA grades through Fred Vinson's Office of War Stabilization...
...The canners' neat trick was pulled just as OPA was about to announce prices for the 1944 pack based on Agricultural Marketing Administration (AMA) grades...
...The NCRC survey showed that since the war began the number of packers' brands—not chain stores' private brands—have more than doubled in 20 representative food chains...
...So—the canners are free to reap fancy profits from the new canning pack, grade labeling is set back, and a tiny amendment of the big canning interests has "knocked out the Federal AMA grades as a basis for OPA's canning price policy...
...This just isn't so...
...They bought more of the expensive, nationally advertised canned brands...
...Here it...
...Canners, under this vicious provision, are free to upgrade an estimated total of 300,000,000 cases of processed fruits and vegetables from this year's pack...
...One store—this is an unusual example—carried 30 packers' brands of canned corn whereas it had carried five brands in pre-war days...
...During the first year of rationing, grocers found that shoppers, with money and not many points, forgot to worry about money—relatively—in comparison with their worry about points...
...is: "Provided further that none of the funds appropriated in this Act shall be used to pay the salary or expenses of any persons engaged in fixing maximum prices for different kinds, classes, or types of processed fruits and vegetables which are described in terms of specifications or standards, unless such specifications were, prior to such order, in general use...
...The Council concluded that such a variety of brand names was no reliable buying guide...
...Blow To Grades, Prices Because of this rider, estimates Bread & Butter, a consumers' newsletter, the buying public will have to pay from $50,000,000 to $100,000,000 more for the 1944 pack of canned goods...
...The trap snaps with those last three words, "in general use," and price officials see no way of getting around the legal wording...
...they are expanding right along, in spite of chain store brands and Government "restrictions...
...The chain stores, despite the valid and invalid criticisms leveled against them, have, along with the co-ops, been convinced of the value of grade labeling...
...Many of them grade label their own brands...
...With the increasing variety of individual packers' brands, consumers have an excellent arguing point for grade labeling—an impersonal Government grading system would guide buyers who face shelves of new, unknown, and varied brands...
...In the last minute rush of getting the OP A legislation through both houses of Congress, the canning crowd's amendment slipped through...
...They bought canned goods labeled "Fancy" or "Choice" and left the "Standard" brands on the shelf—because they had the money to pay for "Fancy" and "Choice" and they didn't know that the "Standard" brands might have been just as good as well as cheaper...
Vol. 8 • July 1944 • No. 31
