A sweet Canadian label debate

by PATRICIA GROTENHUIS

Just because the main ingredient is grown here in Ontario doesn’t mean that it qualifies for the label Product of Canada. But those who grow sugarbeets here in Ontario say sugar made from their product should be granted Canadian status under the federal government’s new voluntary labelling program.

“We want to have Ontario sugar processed in Michigan and brought back (to Ontario). The Canadian International Trade Tribunal looks at it as American sugar. We need to change that,” says Mark Lumley, a sugarbeet grower from Sarnia.

Sugarbeets produced in Ontario are refined in Michigan, and none of the sugar is brought back into Canada. The last refinery in Ontario was closed in February 1968 and Ontario producers now belong to cooperatives in Michigan.

With the sugar being refined and packaged south of the border, it would not qualify for a Product of Canada label. Glenn Jack from Chatham, chair of the Ontario Sugarbeet Growers’ Association, is hopeful that if current lobbying is successful, the product can be brought into Ontario in bulk, where it would be packaged and marketed as a Canadian product.

“The government is pushing homegrown and buy local. This is grown right here in Ontario,” says Jack.

The only Canadian sugarbeet refinery is in Taber, Alberta, and the sugar is only sold in Western Canada. According to Jack, having Ontario sugar available would improve the industry.

“It would benefit us and grow the industry if we had the market,” says Jack. He explained each plant has an allotment of sugar it is able to produce. In 2008, allotments were full in the Michigan plant and many Ontario sugarbeets were left in the fields.

Present Product of Canada labelling guidelines, announced in July 2008, state 98 per cent of the ingredients have to be from Canada. Additionally, processing and labour have to come from Canadian sources.

In March of 2010, Decima Research conducted a survey for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to track consumer awareness and attitudes on Product of Canada labelling. 

Participants were asked if cane sugar, which is not grown in Canada, should be exempted when calculating a product’s imported content. Approximately half of participants agreed. Only one third of participants favoured exemptions for ingredients such as salt and vinegar, which are produced domestically.

Jack says the sugar from beets is identical to cane sugar, so domestic sugar is a possibility.

Kent Bridge farmer Louis Roesch, who has been pushing for changes to Product of Canada labelling for years, says the corn industry is watching the labelling debate closely. Corn sweeteners from Ontario can be used in place of sugar for many products, he explains.

An exemption for sugar would not affect the market for corn sweeteners, provided the cost for corn sweeteners and sugar are competitive, he adds.

Nevertheless, Roesch says requiring products to be made from 98 per cent Canadian ingredients is too restrictive. Too few products would qualify because of the number of minor ingredients such as spices and vitamins that are only available as imports.

Rather than making an exception for cane sugar and otherwise keeping Canadian content at 98 per cent, he suggests lowering the content requirement to 85 per cent. Other rules would need to be set in place, he adds: The product’s main raw ingredients must come from Canada. Imported ingredients should not replace ones produced in the domestic market.

Such an approach would help make products such as Canadian pickles and jam possible. It would be “an overwhelming success,” he says, adding others he has spoken with in the agricultural industry agree. BF