Wattie s goods boycotted

Press, 25 May 1977, Page 7

Wattie s goods boycotted

The Canterbury Housewives Boycott Movement will boycott all goods bearing the Wattie’s brand, as well as chocolate biscuits and coffee.) Housewives elsewhere in! New Zealand have decided to! boycott the entire range of) Wattie’s goods — including goods sold under other brandnames.

“If we try to boycott all Wattie’s goods, the whole idea will flop,” Mrs Kathy Himiona. the leader of the Christchurch group, said on Monday evening.

Frozen foods, tinned foods and one range of cat food were items bearing the Wattie’s brand name, she said. Housewives in Wellington, Dunedin, Hamilton and Invercargill have decided to boycott the entire range of Wattie’s goods. Mrs Himiona said that the Housewives Boycott Movement was concerned that

) wholesalers are stockpiling, (large quantities of goods in ; their warehouses, hoping to sell them at greater profit after price rises had been an-’ nounced. Photographs taken of large stocks of tea, toilet paper, and pet food being held ini Dunedin .warehouses proved, this was happening, she said.) “We demand to know why we should have to pay higher, prices for old stock. When; the stockpile is released from) that Dunedin warehouse the! public will be expected to ab-j sorb these rises. “The consumer has a right) to know who is responsible —, why the goods were stock-) piled, and why the public is being taken for granted,” she) said.

Mrs Himiona said the boycott movement wanted to see, as a legal requirement, the date stamping of all groceries.