Business Notes Marketing

Sorry, Charlie, but a new kind of tuna is out to draw sales away from Star- Kist and other popular brands with an unabashed appeal to patriotism. Bearing a bright red-white-and-blue label, the newcomer is American Tuna. The producer, C.H.B. Foods of Los Angeles, proclaims that its product is "the only brand of tuna packed exclusively in the continental U.S. by a national tuna company."

Tuna canning once thrived on the West Coast, but the major firms moved operations to Asia, the Caribbean and other offshore sites to take advantage of cheap labor. Also, the Japanese have been exporting tuna to the U.S. Since 1977, Star-Kist, Van Camp and Bumble Bee have shut down California canneries.

C.H.B. Foods now stocks American Tuna in California, New York and Pennsylvania stores and hopes to sell nationwide by summer. Says Vice President Robert Allen: "American consumers can make a clear choice between buying American and buying something else." But Star-Kist can also claim to be selling American tuna, since some of its production is packed in Puerto Rico--a commonwealth that sends a nonvoting Representative to Congress--and in the U.S. territory of American Samoa.