The Canadian Cheese Cartel

Allen Pike:

It’s so expensive, in fact, that pizza places estimate their daily food cost with a single number: Cheese Cost. My brother used to work at a pizza place here, and the manager only wanted to know two numbers at the end of the day: revenue, and Cheese Cost. Meat? A rounding error. Vegetables? Irrelevant. Show Me The Cheese.

With these cheese prices, you would expect a healthy import market. Except not, because dairy tariffs in Canada are 245.5%. That is to say, if you want to import a $4.99 block of sharp Tillamook Cheddar, it will cost you $17.27 after import taxes. Surprisingly, there ain’t a lot of sharp Tillamook Cheddar here.

I did not realise I would go bankrupt, were I to live in Canada — I love cheddar!

I’m not sure what Allen means when he says that a “block” of Tillamook Cheddar costs $4.99 in USA and $17.27 in Canada, but I assume he means around 200-250 grams. I found a 2 lb (907 g) “baby loaf” on Amazon for $21.75 (around $75 in Canada?!?), which comes out about right.

Preposterous!

For the sake of comparison, I can get 1 kilogram (2.2 lbs) of Kerrygold Cheddar in Poland for 58.50 PLN (around 17.30 USD).

Allen Pike also felt obliged to point out that…

The Canadian dairy cartel generates substantially less profit than the Mexican drug cartel does.

He made me laugh, so as a thank you I added his RSS feed to my “Must Read” category of feeds.

via Daring Fireball