Dairy
farmers from across Quebec have begun to drive tractors to Ottawa
where they plan to demonstrate on Parliament Hill to demand a ban on
imports of diafiltered milk.
They
say the farms where milk is produced in the U.S. has not met Quebec
and Canadian food-safety standards.
Fluid
milk – sold as drinking milk – requires on-farm inspections to
ensure premises, equipment and procedures meet standards. No Canadian
inspectors check dairy farms in the United States.
Quebec’s
approach has been to hold production down, to keep imports out and to
meet increasing demand for butter and high-butterfat products by
allowing controlled imports.
Ontario’s
approach has been to increase production to meet the increasing
demand for butterfat and to lower the price of milk so it can
displace imports of diafiltered milk.
The
Ontario approach also helps find a Canadian skim milk that’s left
after butterfat is skimmed off.
Ontario
has also dreamed of developing an export market for products made
from its lower-priced milk, but there is a significant risk that the
dairy farmers in the destination countries will successfully lobby
for duties to stop the flow.
In
the 1970s, when Quebec dairy farmers staged a similar protest, a
picture of milk they threw splashing into the face of former federal
agriculture minister Eugene Whelan decked out in a green cowboy that
went global.
