Fish Prices

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29220, 2 June 1960, Page 3

Fish Prices

Sir, —The editorials of yesterday become to-morrow’s wrappers for fish and chips. In a wrapper dated May 19, your journal recorded: fish plentiful; groper 3s 6d per lb in shops. A radio broadcast the same date stated that groper fetched Is IJd per lb. A greater price difference appeared when the shop price of Is 9d per lb for fillets of red cod was compared with the auction market price of 2Jd per lb. When this great difference in prices was pointed out to a fish retailer he said the cod at 2Jd per lb are “stinkers’’ and go to the smokers., In the same shop smoked red cod was marked 2s 4d per lb. One can understand the fish retailers resisting price control and the fishermen complaining about low prices; but one cannot understand what justifies the retail prices for fried or wet fish and oysters.— Yours, etc., RIP VAN WINKLE.

May 23, 1960. [The president of the Christchurch Fish Retailers’ Association (Mr H. Yates) said that fish retailers were not resisting price control but on the contrary had co-operated willingly with price control authorities to enable them to set a fair price for everybody. As for justifying fish prices, the correspondent could get in touch with the secretary of the Christchurch Fish Retailers’ Association (P.O. Box 1032, Christchurch). He would then put the correspondent in touch with a retailer who would clarify for him any marginal difference in prices that might be bothering him.]