Asda has threatened to ratchet up pressure on food suppliers, screamed the business headline in the finance pages:
"Asda plans to get tough with suppliers to ensure prices are kept as low as possible, despite the threat of rising global food prices and warnings from the industry that they will have to pass on costs to consumers.
Andy Bond, the chief executive of the UK's second biggest grocer, said he wanted suppliers to provide "demonstrable evidence" of their attempts to slash costs and increase efficiency before he would allow them to push through price rises.
He said: "We will do our damndest to continue to be the lowest priced [grocer] in the UK ... We will be as aggressive as we possibly can be with our price points. I am not going to squeeze suppliers, but I am going to be very assertive."
Many a supermarket supplier must have been scratching their heads, for only a week earlier suppliers to Tesco were complaining that the retailer was not allowing them to increase their prices until the end of the financial year, in a bid to keep prices in its stores down.
It seems there is a competition going on between the big multiples to see who can be the hardest on their suppliers. It's all posturing and machismo, but it does feed into a fear factor for suppliers.
New Lib Dem Leader Nick Clegg in the UK has spoken out against the supermarket bullyboys as he calls them. "It's time to take on the trolleygarchs!" he has announced. Looks like he's got a new word and is not afraid to use it.
Doubtless though the tough talk will fizzle and inaction will rule. The flap about the sub 2 pound sterling chicken at Tesco was quickly plucked from our attentions this month.
Mushroom growers know the score very well. Even when IFA president Padraig Walshe says "there is a basic unit cost that must be recovered from the market place" the response from the supermarkets is ever more cost cutting.
SuperValu telly adverts had a promotion in late February on mushrooms - buy one punnet, get one free.
It's the same old, same old; or as the famous T-shirt slogan says - Same Shit, Different Day.
