What’s with the Ontario Milk Packaging Debate?

Yah… What’s that about? Most of us don’t care and I know a lot of people who say they like the way my province (and some others) market fluid milk in three-litre bags rather than the plastic jugs they use across the U.S. and in most other Canadian jurisdictions. I say, it’s a tempest in a Milk jug!

Classic Canadian Milk in Bags - © pdd.co.ukHere’s another thing to consider… The plastic pouches which three-litre bags
use are pure plastic and can be recycled for other plastic uses – like
plastic jugs. Cartons, on the other hand, are an amalgam
of paper, inks and plastic films…

Apparently, it’s the Ontario Milk Producers’ lobby that’s ‘keeping us down’, making us buy more milk than we want or need – or buy individual litres at prices somewhat more pricey than the unit cost on those familiar three-pouch bags of milk you find in all Ontario

Anyway, there’s big fooferhaw on in the mainstream media these days over this Milk marketing issue and I, for one, think the media bantering is encouraging the average person to take it all way too seriously!

Here’s one take on the so-called ‘controversy’…

But the real issue is…

…The fact that all Canadians could have less-expensive milk if the Milk Marketing system in this country were changed, allowing gold old fashioned supply-and-demand to rule.

It occurrs to me that the whole tempest in a milk jug about packaging sizes and formats is being used by the Milk industry to try to take our minds off of the bigger issue(s) here!

But, then, I was a mainstream journalist for more than 30 years before becoming a professional Chef and food blogger. So maybe I’m just being paranoid. Or skeptical. Or, maybe, a steely-eyed observer…

~ Maggie J.