Media reports have been breathlessly praising Canadians for buying local instead of American. I expect that, for most urban Canadians, it’s a shocking experience just to find out that their food is actually grown somewhere and does not magically appear at their local grocery store every morning. But, it gets more perplexing for the innocent patriotic consumer, who is now told that just because a label says Canada does not mean that it is truly Canadian. Depending on the descriptor word, such as Product of, Made in, Manufactured in, or Processed in; the Canadian origin or content can be anywhere from zero to 100% depending on some nuanced government regulation.
The cynical might say that except for the 100% label, all others are designed to fool the naïve consumer into thinking that they are buying a genuine all-Canadian product. It seems even the 100% claim only requires 98% content. I suspect all the different descriptors and content minimums are the result of decades of lobbying by importers, brokers, manufacturers, processors, etc, all wanting to give the allusion to the innocent consumer that their products are Canadian. They sort of befuddle the details a bit, knowing most consumers don’t read label fine print.
For sheer impudence, I like the label “Prepared in Canada,” which then states in fine print, “may or may not contain domestic or imported products,” that would be typically Canadian and sort of covers all the angles. I suspect many Canadians would only read the first three words and assume it must be Canadian – which is what the crafty marketer is hoping for.
Retailers are now displaying small signs, stickers and labels with the word Canada on them to guide consumers to buy local. Perhaps the true indicator that a product is genuinely 100% local and Canadian is that the price is usually higher than imported products. But wait, there is more for the bewildered consumer to contemplate, that being: is it all imported products you want to boycott or just American imports in order to stick it to Trump. Well even that needs careful scrutiny because some products are imported into the US and then packaged and marketed as sort of American.
For instance, there are a couple of giants in the continental fresh berry business; they are growers, buyers, contractors, packagers, distributors, importers, exporters and brokers of berries from Canada, the USA, Mexico and other central and South American countries. The labels are always the same with the US address of the company. You would be forgiven if you didn’t notice which country it came from because the berry marketer is more interested in quality and consistency than the country of origin. No problem with that, but regardless of where those berries come from, the shrewd US berry business giant will still make most of the profit no matter where the berry is grown, including any from Canada.
Ponder this situation: is Alberta beef truly 100% Alberta – well, it is most of the time. There are times when Alberta feedlots buy American feeder cattle, feed them American corn and then sell the finished cattle to an American-owned beef processing plant in Alberta, where the workers are members of an American labour union. That beef is then sold across the country as Alberta or Canadian beef. I guess the water used in this situation is 100% Canadian, or is it?
Thousands of tonnes of 100% American beef is imported into Ontario and Quebec every year with no imported product labelling; the innocent consumer presumes its Canadian. Will retailers now label it as imported from the USA – probably not. I guess they can use the universal “Prepared in Canada” label to dodge the American product label. Apparently, in the US, for beef to be labelled a Product of USA, it must be born, raised, fed and slaughtered in the US.
It’s hard to avoid American involvement in most of our food procurement because of their considerable control of the continental and even some offshore food imports. Bananas aren’t grown in the US or Canada, but two major American companies grow, process, ship, and distribute them across the continent from Central and South America. It’s the same for fruit and vegetables from Mexico, Chile, and Peru, as much of the business is dominated by US companies. There’s no problem with that; it’s all free enterprise. But it does make buying 100% Canadian a rather tricky exercise. More next time.
Will Verboven is an ag opinion writer and a proud advocate of Alberta Beef.
