As jam and pickling season approaches, prairie preservers are looking for lids for their older gem line of jars.
They are having trouble finding them.
Last year there were none for sale because the manufacturer stopped making them. It declared that it wasn’t making money on the older line.
However, this summer was supposed to be different.
A new company, Canadian Home Canning Inc. of Toronto, said it would make the gem lids. Then Bernardin, under pressure from petitions, letters, e-mails and the media, capitulated, and announced it would start making the gem line again.
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But with two companies supposedly making the lids, they still are hard to find. Marla Rauser of Lloydminster, one of the originators of last summer’s protest, said last week she could not find any in her home town.
Gordon Tirebuck of Canadian Home Canning said last month he had produced 10 million gem lids, double what he expected, and had shipped them. A Bernardin spokesperson also said lids were being shipped west.
The best way to find gem lids and screwbands, other than to phone local grocery stores, is to check the comments and listings on the bulletin board at the gem lid petition website. For more details, visit www.producer.com and click on links in the news.
On Aug. 8, Tirebuck posted the following on the board: “We have … shipped to Wal-Mart, Superstore, Federated Co-operatives and Safeway, in addition to many other distributors over the last couple of weeks. We will be shipping early next week to Sobeys West (IGA) and we also have an order from Overwaitea Foods and Peavey Industries. The production of the two-piece gem lids and bands is now under way and we anticipate that we will be in the stores in two to three weeks.”
