Behind the scenes, there are ongoing discussions about are renegotiation of CUSMA. One of the things the Americans want is more access to sell us their dairy products. And we say, no way! We have a supply management system that benefits our dairy producers and we're not prepared to give it up. That sounds great in principal, but in practice what are we protecting? Or more to the point, what companies are we protecting?
It looks like the 800 pound gorilla of Canadian dairy companies is Saputo. They are hard to get away from us. They have so many brands: dairyland, Armstrong, Nielsen, and More. And what do they make? Their so-called "cheeses" are far from being a natural product. Take a look at the short video below and see if you disagree.
For myself, I now realize it's not simply enough to buy Canadian, but to buy quality if I can afford it. I'll be seeking out smaller local cheese, producers, and avoiding mega corporations, that may have much foreign ownership, even if they are headquartered in Canada.
What locally produced artisan cheese makers would you recommend?
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by midtoad
5 Comments
There are many great producers of Cheese in Canada.. But to find “Cheese”, you need to look to the US 😉
It’s not really supply management that is the barrier to American cheeses. It’s the difference in regulation… It’s illegal to use BGH in the Canadian dairy system, Not so in the US, so some of the mega-farms don’t make any product that would be able to be legally sold here.
L’ancêtre produces organic cheese and distributes widely across Quebec. Way pricier though.
My understanding is that supply management is not meant to protect the manufacturers, but the daily farmers. I should note that I don’t necessarily believe that the government actors are not also protecting big corporate manufacturers. I should also note that I’m no supply management expert.
What supply management does is effectively regulate the price milk being sold by farmers. That allows family farms to continue to operate. I’ve seen an argument that this is also protecting corporate farms, and that may well be true. With a country as large as Canada, and with so few people, an open market could cause price spikes or troughs. Farms that do not have the capital availability of larger corporate farms could be bought out if the owners could not weather whatever price storm is happening (presumably the price being too low rather than too high).
This ultimately can put our important food production economy into large corporate, and potentially foreign, hand. So, the downstream effect of protecting smaller owners is that we gain the national security of controlling our own food. If large foreign corporations could crater our dairy production industry so that they could then buy up the farms at lower than market value, or even at all, then we as a sovereign nation lose some sovereignty.
ETA: Sorry, I didn’t realize that this was in r/cheese. I dunno, I guess I just thought it was a general Canada one. So my comment isn’t really on topic at all. Sooo, I guess I’ll just add: cheese is the very best food in the world and I’ll defend that position to the death.
One thing that pisses me off about large format brand name cheeses is the consistency. I’m not sure how this is regulated or monitored, even within the companies, but it’s trash.
I’m aware of many quality Canadian brands for more artisan selections, but as a consumer who also doesn’t want to pay an arm and a leg for groceries, I fall back into the routine of buying the generic blocks of cheese at sale prices. Armstrong, black diamond, cracker barrel, and the store brands such as western family and presidents choice, to save a buck here and there.
It’s even extremely hard to stick to one brand that may or may not be better than another (they’re all average), because of the consistency. For example, I’ve been buying Cracker Barrel extra old cheddar (the white one) somewhat consistently for the better part of 15 years. I remember a time when my parents would buy it a long time ago, and it had a very firm, verging on semi hard, feel to it. If you got a crumbly one, you knew it was going to be good and tasty.
Now? It’s a crap shoot. When even selecting one brand and one product from that brand, some are floppy and soft, some taste more mild, sometimes you get a crumbly one, sometimes the flavour is just different. Whatever they’re doing is fucked up and they just pump out whatever crap they can. It’s a poor state of affairs for Canadian dairy companies that should have some pride in what they make.
I’ve been going to Armstrong extra aged cheddar lately, it’s better, but barely. Black diamond is meh, and the value store brands are trash.
I’m not sure which companies in Canada, who can mass produce a quality, common block of cheese are out there. I don’t even know where I’m going with this anymore because I’m just getting upset typing this. If anyone has a good, decently priced cheese brand I can check out, let me know. I’m envious of our southern neighbours having access to Tillamook!
That video is just fear mongering garbage written by a bot. “Chemicals” “Industrial additives” oooou annatto so scary.
You can tell it’s garbage when the claims don’t specify what exactly is being added to the cheese to make it “unnatural”.