by SUSAN MANN
Dairy Farmers of Ontario has pledged assistance to St.-Albert Cheese Co-operative Inc. after its manufacturing facility in the village of St. Albert was destroyed by fire Sunday.
DFO communications director Graham Lloyd said by email the organization “will work closely with them to facilitate getting their product to market. Other processors have faced similar circumstances and, as was the case with them, we will assist wherever possible.”
Francois St. Amour, Mayor of The Nation Municipality, says the co-op is the major employer in the St. Albert area employing 120 people. The Nation Municipality, located in the United Counties of Prescott and Russell in Eastern Ontario, has 11,000 people in its 661-square-kilometre area. The municipality is an amalgamation of several smaller communities, including St. Albert.
“It’s a tough shot for the local economy,” St. Amour said late Sunday afternoon. The warehouse was said to contain $3 million worth of cheese inventory and it’s still standing but it’s “most probably a goner too,” he said. St. Amour said he didn’t know the size of the factory.
As for what the factory’s loss means to the community, St. Amour’s first thought was about the farmers who supplied the factory. “What do we do tomorrow with the milk?”
His next thought was the company’s famous products, including the curds, and where retailers would source them. “Do you know how popular that cheese is?”
Founded in 1894, St. Albert cheese is owned by 50 farmers, it said on the co-op’s website. “Five generations of farmers and craftsmen have worked to maintain St. Albert’s long tradition of quality-aged cheddar, mild cheddar and our famous curds,” the website said. The products are available in many regions of Ontario and Quebec.
Some parts of the factory were old while there has been a $50 million investment in the past two years for an addition, he said, adding “they had just started operating at full tilt about two weeks ago.” The fire started in the older part of the factory where the retail store was located, he noted. It was still smoking about 5 p.m. Sunday when St. Amour spoke with Better Farming by phone.
St. Amour said the first fire call came in at 9:42 a.m. Sunday and volunteer firefighters from nine different departments were called to the blaze, including ones from surrounding communities Embrun, Limoges, Rockland, Casselman and St. Isidore. There were three pumpers and eight water shuttle trucks at the blaze, St. Amour said. Firefighters had to get water from the Village of Casselman and from the Nation River. Seventy-five to 100 firefighters were needed to fight it.
There were workers in the factory at the time the fire started but everyone escaped and there were no injuries, he said. “From what I hear they did smell smoke; they smelled something and they started looking around but couldn’t find anything,” he said. “Then the alarm started and that got everybody out. It was a slow start to it.”
Smoke from the blaze was visible as far as 15 kilometres away. “I live in the Village of Fournier and when I got on the Highway 417 coming here (to St. Albert) I wasn’t even close to Casselman and I could see the smoke,” he said. He had been notified about the fire though text messages and was also sent pictures. “I knew it was bad.”
St. Amour said the cause and the amount of damage isn’t known yet. The Ontario Fire Marshall’s Office has been called but so far the fire hasn’t been determined to be suspicious, he said. “I cannot speak to that.”
The Nation Municipality has offered its offices, phone lines and Internet access along with the St. Albert community hall to company officials for them to use, St. Amour said. “We want to get them up and going as fast as possible.”
Five or six houses surrounding the factory on St. Paul Road had to be evacuated. Those residents hadn’t returned to their homes by 5 p.m. Sunday, he said. The community centre was opened and cots and blankets were available.
The Russell Ontario Provincial Police, Fire Chief Aurele Constantineau, and the Ontario Fire Marshall’s Office couldn’t be reached for comment. BF
Comments
When the mayor's first concern was about the farmers who supply milk to the plant, and "What do we do tomorrow with the milk?", one word comes immediately to mind - Chobani. Unfortunately, this sort of catastrophe simply demonstrates supply management's Stalinist "command-and-control" business model doesn't have the ability to adjust to "shocks". In any other system except supply management, the plant manager would have made arrangements, the minute the fire broke out, to ship today's milk to the much-larger US market, but since exports and imports are "nyet" in the supply management "Kremlin", it just shows another way supply management fails consumers, and even, in this instance, shows how it also fails dairy farmers.
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
Mr. Thompson in the U.S. whenever there is a fire or sudden plant closure people still scramble to find a place for their milk. Recently in Wisconsin there was a procesing plant named Golden Guernsey that suddenly shut down. Producers and customers scrambled to find a solution. Supply managed or not other processers would have to make changes in order to deal with a sudden increase in the volume of milk to be processed.
This is a sad day for a co-op that makes great cheese and I hope they rebuild as soon as possible.
Adrian Straathof
By definition, "security" means having the most possible options if something unforseen happens. By having the borders closed to both imports and exports of milk, this means that supply management has provided less "security" to dairy farmers, rather than more. The only saving grace is that, thanks to supply management, there are probably a good number of milk processing plants operating at less than full capacity, and, therefore, there probably won't be much of a problem finding domestic processing plants able to handle this extra volume of milk. DFO, will, no doubt, try to take credit for solving the problem without ever admitting they were the reason why these other plants were underutilized in the other plants in the first place.
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
CAN'T THE FARMERS CORP TELL THE EMPLOYEES TO MAKE THE CHEESE PRODUCTS IN THEIR OWN HOMES UNTIL THE NEW FACTORY IS BUILT. PEOPLE CAN MAKE IT IN THEIR OWN HOMES. The smaller farmers in the old days made their products in their own homes and were excellent quality. so therefore hire people in the community and treach them how to make it. Yours in Jesus. janet
With respect, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (C.F.I.A) has so many rules and regulations, not even a supreme being would ever be allowed to do what you propose. However, a suggestion to turn DFO's head office into a cheese factory might have merit - they seem to be quite-capable of producing "hard cheese" for consumers and non-supply managed farmers, and, therefore, they might as well make other kinds of cheese too.
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
Wouldn't the DFO look after milk shuffling ? I don't think the people milking the cows have to give it a second thought----the truck will come in the drive and empty the bulk tank, regardless of where it is going too.
I remember when the Ivanhoe Cheese factory burned. The farmer co-op was devastated, but the OMMAB sent the milk elsewhere until they were back in operation.
I have been wrong before, but I think it is the DFO's job, not the farmer to get on the phone and find a place for it to be processed.
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