October 8, 2013
The Queensland Dairyfarmers’ Organisation says Coles supermarket consumers deserve to know about revelations in the media that the supermarket giant deployed a full arsenal of “PR media tactics and spin” to stem the bad publicity resulting from its decision to slash the price of its store-brand milk to $1 per litre.
The QDO said reports in The Guardian and SBS TV revealed Coles deployed “every PR tactic possible to neutralise the noise”.
QDO President Brian Tessmann said the reported admission was further confirmation that the supermarket giant was blatantly ignoring the impacts on farmers.
“For Coles to describe dairy industry impacts as ‘noise’ is a huge insult. That ‘noise’ is the sound of generations of dairy farming experience being forced off the land due to Coles’ marketing tactics,” Mr Tessmann said.
“Here’s an idea for Coles. Instead of mounting massive PR and advertising campaigns worth millions of dollars and talking about ‘noise’, Coles could price its milk sustainably and work positively toward seeing farmers receive a fair and sustainable price for their milk at farm gate.”
Mr Tessmann said the Queensland industry had lost more than 80 farmers since the milk war began and Queensland milk production was drastically down and short of the State’s own drinking milk needs.
“We have lost some 80 million litres of fresh milk production per annum and a loss of over $240 million in investment in fresh milk production, along with 240 jobs at a farm level and more people losing their jobs along the value chain,” he said.
