Canada why is cheese so expensive

Still, the cheese must flow. A few years back, some clever pizzeria owners noticed a loophole in Canadian customs laws. In , the border lines swelled with restaurateurs filling their cars with Costco pizza kits. These kits contained highly sought-after mozzarella cheese, conveniently packaged with pepperoni and pizza crust. Once these bootleg kits got into Canada, the cheese went right onto freshly made pizzas, and the pepperoni and crust went right into the trash.

Restaurant margins 1, a functional system of trade 0. While that loophole has since been closed , our whackadoodle dairy controls continue to cause grief of an international scale. America, Europe, and the world all want to offer Canadians great cheese at reasonable prices.

Minimum price-setting for domestic dairy products keeps cheese prices above a certain mark, while strict quotas and high taxes on imports keep foreign competition under control.

International cheeses account for a tiny fraction of the market, so cheese made in France, Italy, and other places abroad is difficult to find outside specialty shops. When supply management was introduced to Canada in the s and '70s, it served a clear purpose.

The policies were put in place to protect farmers from unpredictable market fluctuations and keep their livelihoods secure. Since then many of the small family farms that were originally protected under the laws have been replaced with factory farms , and the relevance of supply management is now a topic of hot debate. But talk is quiet here, and the Conservative government doesn't want to debate dairy and poultry.

They like trade agreements, but don't mention the cheese. The cost of cheese is one reason to ask questions. It may not rival the Occupy protests, but there is grumbling in grocery store aisles. On a Facebook page devoted to the price of cheese in Canada, one contributor protested: "Free the Cheese.

Prices often seem high, but try shopping in the United States instead. Montreal-based cheese outfit Saputo Inc. It's not a scientific study, but it's a sign. In Canada, eggs, chicken and dairy aren't sold like most goods. Farmers get a quota to produce so much. Competition is kept out. Canada had extra cheddar in July. About 38 million kilograms of extra cheddar. These cheeses are by far preferred by Canadians: Their production and consumption has more than tripled since Cheddar consumption remained relatively stable during the same period.

By , more than million kilograms of cheddar had been sent across the Atlantic to support the war effort. That demand transformed the Canadian dairy industry, boosting the volume of milk farmers could produce and the amount of cheese and other dairy products made in the country. It was a boom for Canadian farmers, one that many expected would continue after the war, Mussell explained.