Canada’s dairy industry won a major victory at the House of Commons agriculture committee last week when MPs agreed unanimously to try to stop the marketing of dairy-free products that have a misleading, dairy-sounding name.
MPs from all parties agreed June 2 to include in proposed new Canadian Food Inspection Agency legislation strict rules on dairy labelling.
“We’re here to clarify products being used, for instance ‘buttery’ popcorn when there’s absolutely no butter used in the product,” said Ontario Liberal and agriculture committee chair Paul Steckle after the vote. “That no longer would be permitted.”
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Dairy Farmers of Canada has lobbied for years to stop the food industry from cashing in on the dairy reputation without using dairy products. The industry lobby claims that using such labels as “buttery popcorn” or “soymilk” leaves consumers the impression they are buying dairy products.
Industry players say it costs them millions of dollars in lost sales. The industry spends tens of millions of dollars promoting the dairy brand.
Last week, MPs decided the CFIA bill now being studied at committee was the best way to meet the industry demand.
However, the legislation is facing difficulty emerging from committee after weeks of hearings because opposition MPs insist the agency would have too much power under the legislation.
The bill almost certainly will not be passed by the House of Commons before Parliament is scheduled to adjourn June 23 for almost three months.
An election looms in the winter. Any bills not approved when the call comes will die, so there is no guarantee the CFIA legislation will become law in this Parliament.
But last week, there was unanimous support for the dairy proposals as all parties court the politically powerful supply management sector in pre-election months.
One of the key lines added to the CFIA legislation is: “No person shall market an agricultural product using a dairy term on a label unless that product contains a dairy ingredient represented by the dairy term.”
DFC executive director Richard Doyle was in the audience when the committee vote was held.
“You’re really talking about a case where the finished product is trying to be presented to the consumer as an alternative for the consumption,” he told MPs.
Later, DFC president and New Brunswick dairy farmer Jacques Laforge issued a statement of praise.
“DFC has been calling for reserving the use of dairy terms on packages to food actually containing dairy products,” he said. This position has been supported by members of Parliament of all parties for a number of years now. We are happy to acknowledge their efforts to clarify labelling and stop the confusion in consumers’ minds.”
When the vote was declared unanimous, Steckle said, “I think we are all smiling.”
However, MPs conceded that it did nothing to deal with another and larger thorn in the side of the dairy industry – unregulated imports of dairy substitutes such as butteroil that are not now subject to supply management tariff controls and yet take a large chunk of the market from higher priced Canadian dairy products.
That, says the government, is a delicate international trade issue and not as simple as domestic labelling laws, although it took the dairy industry years to win political support for their “simple” labelling proposal.
