Archives for the 'canada' tag
Canada’s Dollar and Sense Stronger Than Ours
I was excited to see The Grinder taking on food regulations in a short post this morning titled Canadian Food: Now with Less Regulation!. But then I read the post, and found it’s nothing more than just your standard no such thing as a bad regulation hogwash so blindly followed by many in the media and public alike.
It somehow conflates labeling* with inspection. It fails to acknowledge that large industries tend to like firm regulations because they create often insurmountable barriers to entry. It’s anti-food. It sucks. End of story on that.
But in terms of the post’s topical issue, I’m getting a very strong sense that something revolutionary is afoot with food deregulation in Canada. It’s not just the elimination of these useless labeling requirements so beloved by The Grinder. (And it’s not like Canada doesn’t have–from the same article The Grinder cites–”hundreds of frontline inspectors to review labels on store shelves.”)
But there have been small-but-important baby steps like Quebec’s recent legalization of margarine. (For those of you who think that margarine is truly legal in this country, try buying a tub less than one pound in size.)
And there have been big steps, like the province’s lifting of the ban on raw-milk products–a ban that had forced the mostly disappointing Montreal writer Taras Grescoe to document his quest for perfectly legal raw-milk cheese in France. (Note that, in spite of the subhead on the Quebec-ban article, raw-milk cheeses like queso fresco are perfectly legal in Mexico, which last time I checked was part of North America.)
So Canada’s doing some pretty cool stuff up there, eh? If only I wasn’t a student, and the exchange rate wasn’t so terrible, me and my appetite would pack up the car and head north of the border for good eats this minute.
*Speaking of labeling, Jacob Grier, guest blogging at The Agitator, had a nice post last week on NYC’s menu labeling fiasco.
Help Wanted: Pakistani Cook in Canada
A Fredericton, New Brunswick restaurant owner can’t for the life of him seem to find a sous chef. He’s blaming the government, which seems strange until you actually read the story.
A Fredericton restaurant owner says he’s had little, if any, progress since the provincial government pledged to help him find a cook six months ago.
Rizwan Ul-Haq, who owns and operates Chez Riz on Queen Street, has been trying to get someone to help him carry the load at his well-known eatery that specializes in Indian and Pakistani cuisine.
Ul-Haq works 14-hour days to keep the business going. But his efforts to find someone who can help him in the kitchen continue to meet roadblocks.
“It’s the same story as a couple of months ago. There’s nothing going on,” said Ul-Haq, who has been a restaurateur for 20 years and moved to Fredericton 21 1/2 years ago.
He said he’s been trying to contact the provincial nominee program, but “nobody returned our call.”
He has made attempts to bring in prospective employees from Pakistan, but the Canadian High Commission in Islamabad has nixed his choices for cooks he wants to bring to the country, he said.
“They told me the guy gave the wrong documents because he hadn’t worked at the same place he gave the documents for,” Ul-Haq said.
Since my father’s side of the family first came from England to the U.S. through this part of Canada about 350 years ago, and since I like Pakistani food, I feel qualified to respond.
I don’t know what’s sadder: 1) a government promising to help a restaurant to find a cook and consistently failing; 2) the restaurateur trying and failing to find a cook, often because the people he wants are people the government refuses to admit to the country; 3) the fact that a restaurant owner thinks the government should help him find a cook at all; or 4) the fact the owner wants to pay his charge a whopping $12 an hour.
Whole story here. Perhaps someone could let restaurant owner Rizwan Ul-Haq know about Toronto?
This Week in Bacon
What do you get when you combine Winnipeg and Omega-3 acids? Winningpig!
[T]here’s something decidedly fishy about hogs waddling around three farms near Winnipeg.
Contained within their portly bodies is a glut of omega-3s, the fatty acids found mainly in seafood that make oily fish so healthy.
For years, researchers have puzzled over how to add these highly sought-after oils to the flesh of other animals, with little success.
But over the past five months, Prairie Orchard Farms, a small research and marketing firm in rural Manitoba, has won two prestigious awards for doing just that. First came the federal government’s highest honour for agricultural innovation in November and, three months later, another Alberta-based prize for pork innovation.
The omega-3 pig looks and tastes much like an average hog, but it could prove to be a lucrative new entry into a market that’s increasingly wary of the health risks of red meat.
“I know a product like healthy bacon almost sounds like an oxymoron” said Willy Hoffmann, president of Prairie Orchard, located about 45 minutes west of Winnipeg in Elie, Man. “We have a novel product that way.”
The tale of how Prairie Orchard stumbled upon omega-3 pork is one of luck and perseverance.
More on that tale here. Prairie Orchard Farms describes is suped-up pigs (featuring audio and video links) here. Pick up your Omega-3 bacon — which I hope tastes better than the Prairie Orchard Farms photo pictured above makes it appear — here.
NPR on earlier U.S. scientists’ efforts to cram good fats into bacon here. Slashfood noting Omega-3 bacon was, in 2006, just a bacony pie in the sky idea here.
Yous Guys Moved My Cheese
Lino Saputo, the billionaire cheese-making owner of Saputo, who is almost universally identified in media reports as a Montreal cheese magnate, is fighting back in court against allegations printed in Canadian and Italian papers linking him to the mafia.
Cheese maker Saputo Inc. (TSX:SAP) is suing several Canadian media for defamation over stories linking founder Lino Saputo to the Italian Mafia.
Reports published in December alleged Saputo was part of an investigation by Italian police into a Mafia money-laundering scheme worth some $600 million.
Both the company and Lino Saputo have denied links to organized crime and say legal proceedings in Italy have already confirmed Saputo is not under investigation by the Italian police.
More from the Canadian Press. Perhaps fighting back against the suit, one popular Canadian site today is featuring a non-Saputo list of The Best Cheeses You’ve Never Heard Of.
