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You are conflating two issues: supply management and pasteurization.

For raw milk, it is illegal in plenty of places (Nordics, Scotland, England requires license, Australia):

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raw_milk#Legal_status

As for supply management, the first question to ask is: does Canada want a domestic dairy industry? If the answer is "yes", then it becomes "how will it be supported?"

Because both the US [0][1] and EU [2] subsidize their dairy farmers out of general tax revenues: tax dollars are being sent to them regardless of whether you drink milk or not (lactose intolerant, vegans).

In Canada's supply management system, dairy prices are higher, but if you're not a dairy consumer, you don't pay anything. The cost of supporting farmers is borne by those who buy the farmers' products.

If we Canadians want "cheap" dairy, we can have it: but let's not fool ourselves that it will not come with some kind of cost.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_subsidy

[0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-02/farmers-a...

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/06/12/best-way-...

[2] https://www.politico.eu/article/eus-milk-scramble-for-africa...

I think you're misreading the reference to "raw milk" -- I don't think that poster is referring to pasteurization, just the cost of TPQ quotas.

For those not familiar with Canada's crazy system, farmers must own milk quotas in order to be able to sell milk beyond the farm gate, and this is very aggressively enforced. Quota prices are extraordinarily high; currently $24,000 CAD/cow in Ontario and Quebec, $36,500 CAD/cow in BC, up to around $44,000/cow in Alberta. The effect of this is that even opening a small hobby farm is impossible without huge investments (e.g., the upfront cost just to buy just the quotas, not the land or the cows, for a small 100 cow venture in Ontario is $2.4 million).

At one time long ago, this system was billed as protecting the family farm, but in practice now it drives the death of family farms, as people with quotas slowly sell out to large producers and new farmers cannot enter the marketplace because of the quota cost wall.

That sounds a lot like how taxi medallions work in many large cities. Anybody want to start an Uber for Canadian milk that uses P2P to take advantage of the "beyond the farm gate" loophole somehow?

It would be a dark web service paid for in bitcoin. Seriously, if you want sell raw dairy products in Canada and evade law enforcement, just pretend you are a meth dealer or international money launderer as a cover because they'll ignore you.

You don’t need to control supply with the equivalent of taxi medallions for cows to ensure that dairy production still exists in the country. There is no reasonable way to enter the market as a small local producer. The current system largely exists to protect the profits of large established agribusiness, fleece average families, and discourage innovation and enjoyment of food.

Cheese quality, price, and availability in Canada is absolutely pathetic compared to any European country, the US, or Australia and New Zealand, and we are usually several years behind on product innovations present in other countries such as ultrafiltered, lactose free, grassfed, and A2 milk.

> The cost of supporting farmers is borne by those who buy the farmers' products.

This should be true of any product, but you don’t need to take out a million dollar loan to purchase the quota from existing producers in order to raise cattle, grow blueberries, or produce sugar beets. All those industries are fine and supported by their consumers.

> Cheese quality, price, and availability in Canada is absolutely pathetic compared to any European country, the US, or Australia and New Zealand, and we are usually several years behind on product innovations present in other countries such as ultrafiltered, lactose free, grassfed, and A2 milk.

The EU, US, and AU all subsidize; NZ is not subsidized IIRC.

AFAICT, if you want to get rid of supply management, and have a domestic industry, then we'll have to have subsidies.

> This should be true of any product, but you don’t need to take out a million dollar loan to purchase the quota from existing producers in order to raise cattle, grow blueberries, or produce sugar beets. All those industries are fine and supported by their consumers.

The US is literally dumping milk from overproduction:

* https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/22/politics/pfas-water-chemicals

* https://www.wsj.com/articles/americas-dairy-farmers-dump-43-...

What do you think will happen to our (Canadian) farmers if we all US market dumping?

Not all product segments are the same, even with-in the agriculture sector.

We can also choose to impose tariffs on countries that unfairly subsidize their industries. Restricting external producers and restricting internal producers are actually separate issues that don't have to be entangled, as much as the Canadian dairy lobby loves sowing confusion on this by pretending that they are.

If having autarkic dairy production is important for some reason, limiting opportunities for local producers to enter the market is a weird way of achieving it.

This is a nice theoric discussion but it's just that. Geopolitics doesn't play fair, if Canada tries this it will just get massively steamrolled by retaliatory tariffs.

Dairy quotas are a persistent stumbling block for trade negotiations as it is, and the Canadian dairy industry is so coddled and protected domestically that they don’t mind that they are restricted from export markets.

That doesn’t address the failure of current policy to encourage or even allow dynamic domestic production of this category of commodities to meet consumer demand.

New Zealand does make a lot of concessions for farmers - but not directly like other governments, most of which switched to dairy and wreaked havoc on our water systems over the past 2 decades. Sustainable farming is now becoming more popular in NZ, but the damage has already been done. More than 95% of our waterways shouldn't be swam in[0], compared to 2 decades ago only 10-15% were considered polluted (namely those near major cities and industrial areas).

The government has given no penalties to farmers polluting the environment over the last 20 years, every change in government there's a slow push to have some sort of payment for what's been done, but the it changes again and all progress evaporates. The farmers who originally wreaked havoc on the land are retired now. Putting penalties in place now would just be penalizing their kids, investors or those who joined the farming boom in this country from the 90s.

New Zealand is also a massive hotspot for testing new technology in farms. Speak to any dairy farmer here, they'll likely have some sort of regular cadence with overseas companies (usually Israel or Canada) to discuss product changes, management or updates to software or reporting, etc. But nearly none of the technology innovation happen in the country itself - as soon as development shows promise, it's acquired or relocated somewhere else leaving.

With the price of land in New Zealand reaching all time highs as New Zealand continues to make no progress in reducing the amount of investment in land - I think farming as a profession will continue to push towards intensification just as it has been over the last 20 years. Land is expensive, they need returns to justify the investment. Around, and around we go until the land is a toxic slurry.

[0] https://theconversation.com/polluted-drained-and-drying-out-...

Pasturization is used as a pretext to support supply management. Considering milk has been a staple for some 1000+ years, said dairy non-consumers in Canada are a minority interest that isn't a representative sample of the market or the culture.

Liberalizing the dairy system is not just about "cheap" dairy either, it's about enabling people to make a relatively independent living outside cities, and provide high quality and diversified products to supply food to their regions. This is what supply management prevents.

Also, the point of a market for something people want is that it doesn't need subsidies or have quotas. There is literally no legitimate benefit the quota system provides that could not be handled by import tariffs instead. That is, to actually enforce borders and markets instead of hollowing them out with globalized and dumped products from countries with abusive labour practices and other corrupt subsidies.

Not only this, but the monopoly has has compromised our political processes to where it manipulates party processes. It's laughably corrupt and is an example of what makes Canada seem like a write-off economy in its other sectors as well.

People were smuggling cheese from the states all the time. Canada is on serious downward slope. Super expensive housing, and food prices and high taxes. And outside of the big cities, very little development in decades. Thinking of moving back to Europe.

Saw a documentary about that a while back. Just Googled it for anyone that's interested in how stuff like this starts and is maintained exactly like the parent describes: The Maple Syrup Heist on Netflix.

I remember how expensive cheese was in Quebec, and wine too for that matter. After moving to Germany, it felt weird buying those things and not just when I'm celebrating something. It completely changed my picnic game.

> Quebec has this for maple syrup as well.

The economics for maple syrup are a little different. Most maple groves are located on very fertile land that could be converted for agricultural use. If the price of syrup falls too low, it would be tempting to convert that land to farmland.

Now, converting farmland back to a healthy maple grove would take 40+ years (the time it takes for sugar maple to grow to a point where it starts producing sap).

OK, so what is the problem, is maple syrup an essential product that is at risk if farmers convert the land for other agricultural use? I am an European that never consumed maple syrup, so I am trying to understand what is this about.

> is maple syrup an essential product

No.

> that is at risk if farmers convert the land for other agricultural use?

Yes. You basically have to let very productive land untouched for 40+ years before you can have a single harvest. At current prices it's not worth it. Once a maple grove is gone, it's gone forever.

Current pricing makes it a viable proposition for farmers to keep their groves.

That is the whole point: if maple syrup is not an essential product and some farmers decide to change the use of their land to something else, what is the problem you cannot produce it anymore in the next 40 years? You just give up to some of the syrup, it's not like if supply will reduce and prices will increase you will have to produce more. You just move on and don't do it.

I’ve seen an analysis a while back showing that compared to US and EU, Canada subsidized agriculture to a lesser extent by a few multiples. Quotas might effectively shift the cost of subsidies to consumers, but they’re still lower. Now, if I could find this now.

This isn't a subsidy though, it's quotas, intentional protection from superior competition entering the market.

Is that what you would call regulatory capture?