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Ketchup, Moose Knuckles and Cheese
Buying or selling a product on the basis of where it is from can lead to a whack of trouble.
Take ketchup. Loblaws grocery stores were going to stop carrying French’s ketchup, perhaps because they were eating away at house brand sales. However, the house brand tomatoes came from California and French’s came from Ontario. There was a consumer backlash and Loblaws caved. Then it turned out that French’s ketchup wasn’t bottled in Ontario, so French’s had to scramble and last week announced that all aspects of production would be Ontario-based as of next year. Score a double victory for Ontario consumers.
Take parkas. Apparently, Canada has earned a reputation for cold weather and the assumption purchasers make is that anything made in Canada to fortify against cold weather has to be well-made and, therefore, worth paying a premium price for. So the company that makes the charmingly named Moose Knuckles parka is being pursued by the Competition Bureau for $4 million and restitution to consumers for representing that its parka is made in Canada. Not so fast, says the Bureau. We have rules about calling yourself made in Canada, which mean, among other things, that you have to have at least half of your production costs incurred in Canada. Moose Knuckles makes its parkas in Vietnam and elsewhere in Asia, the Bureau claims. For its part, Moose Knuckles says the Bureau is engaging in a thinly veiled effort to drive it out of business and that it checked with the Bureau along the way to make sure it complied with the rules. A nasty and costly fight looms.
And now, take cheese. Last week’s paper reported on the sale of the Black River Cheese Company to Gay Lea Foods, an Ontario dairy products company owned by a farmers’ co-operative. Gay Lea was quite forthright in stating what was going to happen. The Black River store in Milford will be kept open. However, to bring the factory up to current environmental standards would require a massive investment and even then, production capacity is not large enough to serve Gay Lea’s market. So as a result, only a few artisan cheeses will be produced here in the County, the working example being Maple Cheddar, “a superior blend of medium-aged, fine artisan cheddar and Prince Edward County’s pure maple syrup.”
Now all will be well and good for Black River Maple Cheddar under new ownership. But what about some of the other standards in the currrent repertoire, like Old Cheddar? Are they going to be phased out, or made elsewhere and sold under the Black River label? I happen to have some Black River Old Cheddar in my fridge, so I took it out and looked at the product label. There is a picture of a cow and the cheese factory, along with the words “Black River Cheese—Handcrafted since 1901— Prince Edward County.” So if Gay Lea wants to make Black River Old Cheddar somewhere else, will the reference to Prince Edward County have to be dropped? It strikes me as counterintuitive that Gay Lea would willingly abandon its association with the region that is the source of all things good, fresh, wholesome and natural, just for the silly technical reason that it doesn’t make the product here anymore. There must be a way it can make the consumer believe the cheese is from the County without, of course, actually misrepresenting anything. Doesn’t Black River Old Cheddar deserve to live on with some sort of County affiliation?
Perhaps some creative minds can split hairs and come up with something that is misleading, in a totally harmless sort of way. For instance, I have to hand it to the Moose Knuckles people for the following statement on their website: “We build Canadian know-how, grit and heritage into every fibre, stitch and zipper.” It stops just short of saying the parka is made in Canada; but if you want to conclude that it is, well, you are an adult.
What I have in mind is some sort of representation like “Prince Edward County’s favourite since 1901.” No outright fibs in that statement. True, perhaps if it were a parka we might get in a little trouble and if it were ketchup, we might be more closely scrutinized by consumers. But this is Old Cheddar, and this is Prince Edward County, so the standards should be different.
What’s that? What are Moose Knuckles, you ask? You’d better look that up for yourself in one of those online urban slang dictionaries. This column may demonstrate questionable ethical, standards, but it rigorously avoids vulgarity—except where it might generate a cheap chuckle.”
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