As the year ended, one of the most fierce critics of Canada’s dairy supply management system suffered two setbacks and a rebuke from the federal agriculture minister.
In late November, the federal government tabled a budget-implementation ways-and-means motion in the House Commons that ends a scheme created by J Cheese Inc. to import tariff-free a combination of mozzarella cheese and pepperoni that allowed the company to avoid a mozzarella import quota as high as 240 percent.
Dairy Farmers of Canada said in May, when the Canadian International Trade Tribunal ruled it could not challenge the imports, that it was an affront to supply management trade protection rules and should concern the government. It was allowing several thousand tonnes of mozzarella into the country tariff free annually.
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Six months later, the government quietly acted, effectively closing the loophole to the dismay of the Canadian Restaurant and Foodservices Association.
Then in mid-December, the Canadian Dairy Commission awarded dairy farmers a one percent increase in industrial milk price supports for 2014, triggering another bitter reaction from the restaurant lobby.
“Dairy prices in Canada have historically outpaced both the consumer price index and the farmer’s own cost-of production,” the CRFA said in reaction to the announcement.
“We have told the CDC that they are pricing dairy off the menu.”
Agriculture minister Gerry Ritz was not sympathetic to the industry critics.
“I always ask my friend Garth White (CRFA president), when was the last time there was a decrease in hotel or restaurant meals?” Ritz said.
“It’s called inflation, it’s called the cost of production. That’s the nature of it. At the end of the day, if you shut down every supply managed farmer in Canada, it would not make a difference to the price of milk on the restaurant table in Canada or the price of chicken at Kentucky Fried Chicken.”
