People are stealing butter in Ontario. Lots of it.
It's not me-- honest, guv--but I do understand the temptation. Dairy products are like gold bullion in Canada. I have never understood why it should be the case, in this country of grassland, of many plains and waving fields of grain, where cows flourish. There are almost 10,000 dairy farms in the country and nearly 100,000 dairy cows (according to The Internet). In fact (well okay, in fiction) Ontario has been the destination for more than one The Archers character (BBC Radio 4: "an everyday tale of country folk") to acquire cutting-edge knowledge of dairy-herd management. In short, milk and its derivatives should be cheap as chips ("chips are not that cheap," daughter admonishes me-- but that's another story).
Apparently it is all to do less with ecology and more with economics: tariffs and subsidies and probably marginal utility (@aydinozkan and @gulcinozkan 🩷😉!). These sound like specious excuses to me but then my knowledge of the capitalist enterprise pretty much starts and ends with the movie Trading Places so I may be missing a few of the finer points.
I've written before about milk in Ontario but dairy is on my radar again with this news of rampant butter theft. I get it. Dairy is costly. Today I went to our local cheese shop which has better prices and higher quality than the supermarket where we get our mainstream groceries. Plus it's in Kensington Market, independent and family-owned and the staff woo customers with delicious samples. Today they plied me with a taste of a nice hard Dutch cheese, and in honor of my son in Utrecht, I bought a small amount. Maybe six ounces. I also bought a sliver of a Quebecois goat's cheese called Grey Owl that I love, and a little tub of grated parmesan-adjacent cheese. That was it. I could have carried the whole lot home in a coat pocket.
The total came to almost $25.
So no one should be too terribly surprised to learn about thieves targeting this "yellow gold" nor by the ensuing discussion amongst pundits about "the bitter battle to bring down the butter bandits" (Ottawa CityNews--which also wins Best Headline award, IMO). "Nine heists. Thousands of dollars in stolen product. The slippery mystery of Ontario’s butter bandits" is another, less euphonious one, from the Toronto Star. Apparently butter is in particular demand because milk fat is even more expensive than other dairy components. Probably, say those pundits, the illicit haul goes to commercial bakeries rather than being sold off stick by stick to passers-by clutching dry toast in dark alleys.
Three culprits were arrested but gave false names and have now got away. Slick, these folks.
