Farmers Unite to Support the Canada Takeout Campaign

Thursday, 23 April 2020 15:01

Canada's dairy, poultry and egg farmers have joined forces in asking everyone to support local restaurants right now. Article also includes an interview with the VP of the Dairy Farmers of Canada who explains the impact on the dairy industry.

CANADA - Canada's dairy, poultry and egg farmers have joined forces in asking everyone to support local restaurants right now.

They have launched the Canada Takeout campaign on April 15th, it encourages all Canadians to order from their favourite local restaurants on Takeout Day every Wednesday.

10 percent of all restaurants in Canada have had to close permanently, in Ontario that works out to 3,500 restuarants.

Heart FM recently spoke with the Vice President of the Dairy Farmers of Canada David Wiens who says they really need everyone to take part in this.

"Restaurants have been our trusted partners for many years, they do play an important role in Canada's farm support eco system, that is how our food is presented to Canadians, or at least one of the important ways."

Wiens says not having restaurants open right now has had an impact on the dairy industry.

"We have absolutely seen a drop in demand for things like cheese and cream, very important users. It hard to say what the overall impact as been. We have had a bit of an uptick on the retail side of things, in terms of demand for different types of dairy."

Wiens says some dairy farmers have been told to dump raw milk.

"Farmers were in many cases forced to discard milk, because our customers and processors wouldn't recieve milk and the problem there is our customers have pushed back, simply the demand was gone."

Wiens adds this has had a massive impact on the whole supply chain.

"Meantime on dairy farms, our cows milk 365 days a year and we cannot simply shut off the tap when the demand drops for a few days. It takes awhile to adjust our production to the market demands. That is one thing we have been doing over the past several weeks, sending out those signals, dairy farmers across Canada, to reduce their production."

You can listen to the entire interview with David Wiens below.