Some popular cheeses will be missing from store shelves after the CFIA banned imports of raw-milk products. <\/p>\n
Some popular cheeses will be missing from store shelves this holiday season after the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) banned imports of raw-milk products from France, Italy and Switzerland following outbreaks of lumpy skin disease in European cattle herds.<\/p>\n
The ban applies to non-pasteurized cheeses produced on or after May 23, 2025. That means classics such as Brie de Meaux, Saint-Marcellin, Comt\u00e9, Swiss Gruy\u00e8re and Parmigiano Reggiano will become harder to find as inventories across the province dwindle in the coming months.<\/p>\n
Ibrahim Abdelgawad, owner of Fromagerie Maisonneuve in Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, said he is worried about the ban because he doesn\u2019t know when it will be lifted.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom what I understand from suppliers, it\u2019s permanent \u2014 like in the United States, where raw-milk cheeses are banned. Canada may apply the same regulations. And it\u2019s worrying because that\u2019s our specialty,\u201d he said in an interview.<\/p>\n
His father founded the cheese shop in 1985, giving the family decades of expertise in the trade.<\/p>\n
According to the CFIA, lumpy skin disease is a viral infection in cattle marked by fever and eruptions of skin nodules of varying size. It is spread by biting insects such as mosquitoes, horse flies, deer flies, midges and tsetse flies.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe sell pasteurized cheeses too, but our real specialty is raw-milk products that need care and aging. That\u2019s what brings people to a specialized cheese shop,\u201d Abdelgawad said.<\/p>\n
The virus does not infect humans, but it can spread quickly among cattle and has a devastating impact on production and trade.<\/p>\n
Abdelgawad said he first learned of the outbreak from European media and found out about the Canadian ban later in the summer.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are products we can no longer get, like soft cheeses such as reblochon or raw-milk goat cheeses. Those have short expiry dates, so we haven\u2019t had them for a long time. And we won\u2019t be able to replace them because of the protected designations,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you pasteurize or thermize, it loses the protected status, so it\u2019s no longer the same cheese. Some cheeses have pasteurized alternatives, but you can\u2019t call it a reblochon anymore, for example.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said some of his most popular cheeses are already out of stock, calling it a complete shortage. Firm cheeses are still available, but supply is limited.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe try to suggest alternatives, sometimes Quebec cheeses that are similar. But of course, we don\u2019t have the same expertise as Europe. They have thousands of years of tradition compared to maybe 50 years here. It\u2019s not the same. Even if alternatives exist, customers don\u2019t necessarily want them,\u201d Abdelgawad said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Some popular cheeses will be missing from store shelves after the CFIA banned imports of raw-milk products. Some…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":178981,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[712,49,48,84],"class_list":{"0":"post-178980","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-apple-news","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-health"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178980"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178980\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/178981"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}