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Here's why milk comes in bags in parts of Canada
Social Sharing
[21]Cost of Living
Here's why milk comes in bags in parts of Canada
Milk in bags — a kitchen staple in parts of the nation. Why? The metric
system, in part.
Social Sharing
The metric system is 1 reason parts of Canada gets moo juice in bags
CBC Radio · Posted: Jan 02, 2020 7:07 PM ET | Last Updated: January 3
Bags of milk are the only way to get four litres' worth at this
Shoppers Drug Mart in Peterborough, Ont. (Emmanuel Pinto)
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comments
Listen5:06
Milk in bags — it's a kitchen staple in some parts of Canada.
Yet there are areas of the country where the concept of four litres of
moo juice coming in transparent, jiggly bags is the most inexplicable
thing about life in Eastern Canada.
But what's to blame for the proliferation of bagged milk in Ontario,
Quebec, and Maritime provinces but not others?
It's a question The Cost of Living heard from listeners who were
confused when they had difficulty finding the same milk jugs in Ontario
that are easily sourced at any grocery store from British Columbia to
Manitoba, or in the United States.
This doesn't make any sense. Why would they do it like this?- Shemma
Yamach, puzzled by milk bags after moving to Toronto from Edmonton
"Whenever I have American friends visiting, they think the milk in my
fridge is totally ridiculous," said CBC reporter Jonathan Pinto. "In
Detroit, milk comes in jugs."
Even chocolate milk comes in bags in parts of Canada. (Canadian Food
Inspection Agency)
The reaction is similar for people who come eastward from western
provinces.
"Coming from Alberta, I'm used to seeing milk jugs. I went through the
store repeatedly and couldn't find them," said Shemma Yamach, who moved
to Toronto after growing up in Edmonton.
She quickly realized the issue wasn't that every grocery store she
visited was just out of what she thought was universal — the four-litre
hard plastic milk jug.
Those who use milk bags also know to have a reusable plastic holster
for said bags. (City of Toronto)
"After going to people's homes and seeing that everyone had these bags
of milk, and they cut them open on the corner and drink milk out of
this pitcher… well, I just thought this doesn't make any sense. Why
would they do it like this?" asked Yamach.
The question was echoed by Pinto, who works for CBC Radio's Afternoon
Drive in southwestern Ontario.
"How come some places have milk in bags, and others don't?"
Enter the metric system
Milk bags first entered the Canadian market in the late 1960s.
* [22]Milk in bags? It was the new normal 50 years ago
However, Canada's conversion to the metric system in the 1970s
meant dairy producers needed to replace and resize existing milk
containers, which were measured in imperial quarts.
When buying milk in plastic bags, consumers have to buy a jug to hold
it too. The practice goes as far back as 1969. (CBC News/CBC Archives)
Retrofitting assembly lines or replacing heavy glass bottles was an
expensive prospect for the milk industry, and milk bags — which they
were already experimenting with — could be easily and cheaply adjusted.
Changing a one-quart bag to a 1.3-litre bag was relatively painless, so
three-quart bags of milk quickly became four-litre bags across parts of
Canada.
Where my bags at?
Milk bags started to fall out of popularity in many parts of the
country as the hard plastic used for things like large jugs became
cheaper.
Plus, in the 1980s, Brian Mulroney's Progressive Conservative
government relaxed rules on metric measurements.
* Video
A compromise between metric and imperial
This combination helped market forces take hold, and milk jugs slowly
became more popular in areas of the country.
Milk, without bags, is pictured at a B.C. grocery store in Sept. 2018.
(Jonathan Hayward/The Canadian Press)
"I think the shift took place less as a result of a movement away from
plastic bags, and more the attraction of rigid milk jugs," said Dan
Wong, president of the Western Dairy Council.
Eventually milk bags became unheard of in provinces like Alberta or
British Columbia.
Why the bag for Ontario?
Ontario has remained an exception.
For decades, regulations in Ontario restricted the sale of more than
one pint or about 473 millilitres of milk in containers other than
plastic film pouches (aka bags), laminated containers or coated paper
containers (such as Tetra Paks).
"I think it was a historical regulation that stemmed back to the days
when plastic jugs were very rare in the marketplace," said Dan Wong.
To sell milk in four-litre hard plastic jugs, a retailer or producer
had to implement a deposit or recycling system for those products and
some stores, such as the [23]Becker Milk Company, did so. Consumers
could buy milk jugs at those retailers if they paid a deposit for the
jug at the store.
Stunned by the size of these giant milk bags sold in supermarkets in
#Canada! #milk #travel pic.twitter.com/HDVKVDicqo
—[24]@carolchan9394
Bags did not have this restriction, so mainstream grocery stores and
milk producers stuck to the bags for the most part. This explains why
Ontario grocers almost exclusively provided large quantities of milk in
bags.
In other markets such as Quebec or Nova Scotia, bags and jugs have
co-existed for years based on demand.
The Ontario regulation [25]was amended in mid-2018, but consumer habits
can take decades to break, so expect to keep seeing white, jiggly milk
bags at your local grocery store for years to come. At least in
Ontario.
__________________________________________________________________
Written and produced by Anis Heydari.
Click "listen" above to hear the segment, or [26]download the Cost of
Living podcast.
More from this episode
* [27]Refineries near the oilsands and why companies aren't all over
it like oil on sands
* [28]Here's why milk comes in bags in parts of Canada
* [29]What drives the cost of condo insurance?
* [30]Tariff, tariff, wherefore art thou money, tariff?
* [31]Is it actually cheaper to buy a new printer rather than
replacing ink cartridges?
* EPISODE 18
FULL EPISODE: We answer your burning questions about things like
milk bags, tariffs, condo insurance and printer cartridges
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