Malaysia Today - Your Source of Independent News
Malaysia Today - Your Source of Independent News |
| The Gardenia vs Massimo bread war Posted: 12 Jul 2013 05:20 PM PDT
Why has the battle gone overboard so as to drag the innocent bread consumed by whomever who wants to, into a business involving the various communities in our country? Sakmongkol, TMI While our PM talks about 1Malaysia, it has not gained traction on the ground. Only in the media, one sees universal but unfortunately clueless acceptance of the concept. On the ground, the story is quite different. We are faced with a cynical public that sees everything that affects our daily life in terms of race. It has now extended into economics and business. Not long ago, there were attempts to discredit the popular Old Town cafe outlets. Rumours were spread saying that Old Towns are serving non-halal food items. Clearly those rumours were aimed at discouraging Malay Muslim patrons to the outlets. Other eateries have suffered from the same irresponsible business sabotage. Nothing is worse than attacking business usually patronised by Muslims other than spreading rumours about the food being unclean or non-halal. The Malay Muslim may drink and engage in sexual dalliances but eating and consuming non-halal food, such as pork, is absolute taboo. Take another example. The silent bread war. Most of the public is not even aware that there is a bread war going on. On one side is Gardenia said to represent Umno bread and Massimo, the brand produced by Uncle Bob Kuok's business group. I was not aware about the war between the Gardenia brand and the Massimo brand until quite recently. I recently heard about the matter when it was mentioned in Parliament. It got the attention of Anwar Ibrahim who was reported to have mentioned that Gardenia bread has increased its price. This prompted an in-passing reply from a Barisan Nasional backbencher stating that he received an official statement from Gardenia bread, that it has not increased its price. Gardenia bread is selling at RM3.20 a loaf compared with Massimo selling at RM2.50. The RM2.50 was supposed to be a promotional price. It has stayed at that level for 2 years. Nobody asked how can it do that? The answer is they can because they sourced their flour from their own mill. Federal Flour Mill (FFM) owned by Robert Kuok. In addition, not many people know that all flour millers get millions of ringgit in subsidy from the BN government. FFM gets some RM80 million in subsidies as a flour miller. One, they source from their own mill. Two, they can pass the RM80 million subsidy from the government to consumers. Consumers can enjoy Massimo bread at RM2.50, courtesy also of the Umno-led government. Gardenia does not have its own flour mill. It does not enjoy government subsidy. It sells its premium wheat germ bread at RM3.20 a loaf. Why has the battle gone overboard so as to drag the innocent bread consumed by whomever who wants to, into a business involving the various communities in our country?
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