Two major Canadian cheesemakers plan to appeal last month’s Federal Court ruling that effectively shot down their challenge of new federal standards for cheese made in and imported to Canada, according to La Terre de Chez Nous.
The Quebec farmers’ newspaper in its Nov. 12 issue quoted Kraft Canada spokesperson Lyne Galia as saying the company, along with Quebec-based dairy giant Saputo, has studied the Federal Court ruling and decided to request a hearing at the Federal Court of Appeal.
The two companies — which along with the Canadian wing of Italian dairy giant Parmalat had mounted the original challenge — still believe their position on the new cheese standards to be well founded, Galia told La Terre.
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Last month’s Federal Court ruling relates to the government’s amendments to the Food and Drugs Act and Agricultural Products Act, which took effect last December.
The amendments put limits on cheesemakers’ use of milk solids, also called “modified milk” or milk protein. The new federal standards require cheesemakers to use more whole milk in their processing.
Kraft, Saputo and Parmalat had argued in October 2008 that the new rules would increase their costs and raise the price of cheese to consumers, in what they said would at first be a $185 million annual boon to dairy producers from higher milk sales.
“The new regulations will hurt both cheesemakers and dairy farmers. They will increase the price of cheese to consumers, may reduce cheese consumption and threaten the viability of Canada as a cheesemaking nation,” the companies said in a joint release at that time.
“There are other ways to support dairy producers’ incomes in Canada than to destabilize all of the industry,” the companies’ spokesman, Yvan Loubier, told the Manitoba Co-operator’s Ron Friesen last October.
But Federal Court Justice Luc Martineau last month dismissed the three companies’ application for judicial review and awarded costs to the federal government.
The federal amendments were first published in December 2007 to give cheesemakers time to adapt before the new rules came into place Dec. 14 last year.
La Terre’s Jean-Charles Gagne noted Parmalat Canada no longer appears to be part of the coalition fighting the amendments. Citing “confidential information,” the company declined comment when contacted by the newspaper.
