The Ontario Farm Products Marketing Commission waited until
this week to post a new milk act regulation on its website that paves the way
for another pricing class for milk.
The Dairy Farmers of Ontario marketing board has adopted a
strategy of pricing milk low enough to take back markets that are being served
by imported milk protein isolates.
Its approach has been heavily criticized by the chairman of
the national milk marketing agency, Dairy Farmers of Canada, and by members of
the Quebec milk marketing board and Quebec’s largest general-membership farm
organization.
Their strategy is to pressure the federal government to
restrict imports and to maintain high prices for a
slightly smaller market share.
It’s not clear why the commission took so long to post the
regulation which it approved on March and which came into effect April 1.
The regulation can be read online at www.ontario.ca/laws/regulation/900753?search=MILK+ACT .
