It was Paul Bongiorno, the veteran Ten Network political reporter who put me onto La Gina tomatoes. Not personally, of course. But he featured once in a weekend magazine bit I used to find oddly compelling, the shopping baskets of public figures. Every week someone new would name a couple of products they always popped in their basket or trolley. For Bongiorno, it was La Gina's peeled pomodori. He thought them more vibrant of hue, with a much greater density of taste than any comparable tinned tomato, and with a name like his I figured he had to know his stuff, so I gave them a try. Been buying them ever since. They've gone into hundreds of pasta sauces, casseroles, reductions and soups.

Or at least they did until recently when I found they seemed to have been replaced on the shelf of my local Woolies by another brand, with which neither I nor I suspect Mr Bongiorno would have much truck. This was distressing, perhaps strangely so. After all, they're just bloody tomatoes, but I've had so many fondly remembered meals thanks to the work of Carlo Valmorbida (La Gina's 'creator') that it felt as though something had been taken from me, even if it hadn't. (I actually rang La Gina to enquire whether they still supplied the red gold to the far-flung outpost of my tiny metro-style local supermarket. They assured me that they did still supply Woolworths, but suggested I should talk to the individual storeowner about restocking.)

Yes, it's a first world problem, having to settle for shitty, flavourless home brand or so-called 'private label brand' tomatoes, but damn it I live in the first world and I want my goddamned La Gina. It's all too reminiscent of what happened when Arnott's biscuits were taken over by a US multinational and the curious, engaging regional differences you'd get between a packet of Scotch Finger biscuits made in Brisbane, or one made south of the Rio Grande, suddenly disappeared - along with the old biscuit factory on the edge of the city, from which buttery baking smells would sometimes drift into town on a favourable wind.

You mess with people's food, even in little ways, and it angries up the blood. Hence the sudden upsurge in media coverage of the revelations about Coles' and Woolies' increasingly thuggish and arrogant tactics in their dealings with food suppliers. And it's not just about the little guys they've been screwing for years. When companies such as Heinz and Coca-Cola cry foul about the duopoly's brutish behaviour, it's time competition regulators woke up and got to work. Frankly, I'd be more than happy to see them forcibly broken up.

The duopoly controls 80¢ in every dollar spent on groceries in this country. It has the power to destroy long established food businesses by locking them out of the retail channel. For instance, when Greenseas tuna was bumped from the shelf at Coles in favour of the supermarket's own cheaper, and almost certainly more ecologically unsustainable 'private label brand', that punched a hole in Greenseas balance sheet out of which the very life of the company could quickly drain. There are hundreds of similar stories, long before you get the tales of woe told by farmers who have long seen the duopoly drive down the price they get at the farm gate, before laying on massive profit margins when the milk, meat or produce hits the shelf in store.

It might not seem like such a big deal. In fact, on the face it might seem like a great deal for the consumer because we're getting much cheaper prices. But we're also seeing our choices constrained, and once the cartel has destroyed any alternative suppliers, and left us with just their own poxy, house brand crap - what chance of those low, low prices suddenly making for the stars?

You can help of course. Not just by harassing your local MP but by spending your dollar well, if you have the chance to do so. And, yes, not everyone, especially way out in the 'burbs will have that chance. But if you do have access to fresh food markets, or an alternative supermarket, or even a small bespoke grocer like the most excellent Sourced, of Teneriffe, think about spending that dollar where it's gonna do some real good.

And maybe, spitefully, where it might even do a little harm to the cold-eyed numbers men of a heartless duopoly.

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/blogs/blunt-instrument/demise-of-the-killer-tomatoes-20111128-1o316.html