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Why Does Canada Have Bagged Milk? Where Are the Cartons?

Americans are used to seeing dairy milk offered in cardboard cartons or plastic jugs, so why does Canada have bagged milk? Let's explain the thriller.

Bianca Piazza - Author

Milk has noticed, smartly ... it's seen a decline in recognition over the final a number of years. From oat milk to soy milk to nut milks (we really can not live without our caramel oat milk lattes), selection milks are taking over, but dairy milk remains to be a factor. And it is nonetheless offered in cartons — well, it is in the U.S.

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It tuns out that Canada sells cow juice in plastic bags. That's proper, not gallon jugs, no longer cardboard cartons, but baggies. Imagine simply opening your refrigerator to find an IV bag full of milk, able to be used on your bowl of Corn Flakes. It's unreal. But why, what is the explanation why (cue Cardi B)? And did Canada print pictures of missing kids on said baggies? OK, most likely not, but nonetheless, we have plenty of questions.

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Why does Canada promote bagged milk?

According to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, bagged milk is a peculiar staple in Ontario, Quebec, and Maritime provinces, however different portions of Canada are strangers to the impractical phenomenon.

"Whenever I have American friends visiting, they think the milk in my fridge is totally ridiculous," CBC reporter Jonathan Pinto admitted. "In Detroit, milk comes in jugs."

It in reality is inconvenient to snip the corner of a bag of milk only to place it in a tumbler and pour it from there. There are simply too many steps; why is that? Well, think about the issues that vary between the U.S. and Canada. The latter has far more maple syrup than America does, the folks are much kinder (New York is not for the faint of heart), and, oh yeah, they have the metric system.

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As detailed via the CBC, Canadian milk bags were birthed in the past due Nineteen Sixties. So, when Canada transformed to the metric machine in the '70s, the dairy business had to resize milk containers, that have been measured in imperial quarts at the time. The cheapest method to do that involved sticking with the bags, which the business was once already testing at the time anyway.

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"Changing a one-quart bag to a 1.3-litre bag was relatively painless, so three-quart bags of milk quickly became four-litre bags across parts of Canada," the CBC wrote. This used to be compared to resizing large glass bottles, which would be a moderately pricey process.

But when plastic jugs became a less expensive choice to glass, some parts of Canada opted for the now-classic jug of milk. And while Alberta and British Columbia are practically void of bagged milk, Ontario has held onto the bizarre dairy packaging. And yes, there's a historical reason why for that as well.

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Apparently Ontario has a atypical little restriction about how much milk you'll be able to purchase in explicit containers. Regulations didn't permit the sale of a couple of pint of milk in bins that were not "plastic film pouches (aka bags), laminated containers, or coated paper containers," the CBC wrote.

"I think it was a historical regulation that stemmed back to the days when plastic jugs were very rare in the marketplace," Dan Wong, president of the Western Dairy Council, informed the outlet.

It kind of turns out like they are sticking to the plastic milk baggage for the gag of it all.

Rather than put in force a deposit or recycling program for gallon milk jugs, retailers found it more straightforward to promote giant baggage of milk.

And despite the fact that this extraordinary legislation was once adjusted in 2018, milk baggies are just what Ontarians know. Maybe in the future they're going to get to experience secretly drinking milk from a gallon jug, but till then, milk IV bags it's!

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Tandra Barner

Update: 2024-06-08