Canada produced more than 496 million kg of cheese in 2017
By Diego Flammini
Staff Writer
Farms.com
Many people are incorporating their favourite cheeses into today’s meals as part of National Cheese Day.
Canadian cheesemakers are especially gouda at making cheese and consumers have a Havarti appetite for different varieties.
Canadian facilities produced more than 496 million kilograms of cheese 2017, the Canadian Dairy Information Centre (CDIC) says. Cheddar and mozzarella accounted for more than 310 million kilograms of the total Canadian cheese production.
And Canadians ate 13.79 kg of cheese per capita in 2017, the CDIC says.
Of course, the milk used to make Canadian cheese comes from the country’s more than 10,000 dairy farms.
When milk arrives at the creamery, cheesemakers are looking for specific characteristics.
“You want the milk to be as fresh as possible,” Jacco Beyer, the cheesemaker at Crystal Springs Cheese in Lethbridge County, Alta., told Farms.com today. “You want a milk that’s clean with a low bacteria count and you want milk that has low somatic cell numbers.”
Like other agri-food sectors, cheesemakers are trying to keep up with changing market demands, especially when it comes to dietary restrictions.
“Organic cheese is steadily growing and we’re working on making cheese with A2 milk,” Beyer said.
Most Canadian milk contains a mixture of A1 and A2 beta-casein proteins, Albert Milk says.
People with sensitivities to the A1 protein may be able to digest the A2 protein easier, Beyer said.
First dairy education facility
Oxford County, Ont. may be able to claim responsibility for creating Canada’s first dairy education facility.
A husband and wife team worked to provide the surrounding communities with fresh cheese.
“Lydia Ranney was manufacturing cheese in her farmhouse in the 1850s and her husband Hiram would peddle it from town to town,” Scott Gillies, curator of the Ingersoll Cheese & Agricultural Museum, told Farms.com today. “They hired people from neighbouring farms, and Lydia should really be credited with creating the first dairy school in Canada.”
One of the neighbourhood employees, James Harris, became the Ranneys’ son-in-law and worked to bring Ontario cheese overseas.
“In the spring of 1866 he identified a marketing opportunity in Britain. Rather than send a bunch of 90-pound wheels, they set on this idea of manufacturing a mammoth cheese, which they completed by August of that year.”
The mammoth cheese weighed more than 7,000 lbs, was 7 feet in diameter and 3 feet deep, Gillies said.
The fruits of Harris’s labour can still be seen today.
“His home is now the Elm Hurt Inn & Spa,” Gillies said.
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