OTTAWA — The Canadian Restaurant and Foodservices Association (CRFA) is appealing to the Canadian Dairy Commission for a break from inflated dairy prices.
Speaking on behalf of the CFRA’s ‘free your milk’ campaign and its 30,000 members nationwide, Garth Whyte, the CRFA’s president and CEO, said, “We need reasonable pricing if we’re going to grow the dairy industry in Canada. Our members tell us dairy products are being priced right off the menu.”
According to the CRFA, fairer prices could help reverse a trend of declining consumer demand for dairy products. More affordable prices will allow restaurant operators to put more milk, cheese and other dairy items on their menus.
The launch of the CRFA’s ‘free-your-milk’ campaign was implemented to bring attention to long-standing management policies responsible for raising the cost of dairy in Canada to double the international market average. “Canadian restaurants buy over $2.7 billion worth of dairy products each year, and we are concerned by the artificially high, government-fixed prices as set by the CDC,” said Whyte. “Over the past decade, the price of industrial milk has been rising faster than inflation and faster than the cost of dairy production.”
