A committee has been formed to help keep Thornloe Cheese from closing its doors for good.
It's simply named Save Thornloe Cheese
"We are going to need the entire community's support to make sure that we are able to fight this! says Robin Flewwelling, a dairy farm in Earlton. "The more voices speak up against the closure, the stronger our chance to get our favourite squeaky curds back on the shelf will be."
Residents are being asked to show their support at #SaveThornloeCheese. A petition is at a number of area stores and an online petition is in the works. You can email support here.
This committee has been organized by the Temiskmaing Dairy Producer Committee. Members are Anna Regele, Dominic Levielle, Sam Loranger, Josh Jackson, Darren Jibb, and Flewwelling.
Gay Lea Foods announced the sudden closure last week via a notice on the Thornloe Cheese Highway 11 store.
A spokesman for Gay Lea says the equipment is so old it would cost $10 million to upgrade, and that doesn't make sense financially.
See: Fight is on for future of Thornloe Cheese
And: Old age killed Thornloe Cheese
A poster on the Facebook page wrote, "The fall-out will be bad. A huge amount of independent-owned restaurants use Thornloe Cheese in their menus, food trucks use their curds for poutine, and schools relied on their cheese fundraisers every year to generate funds for extracurricular activities....a massive loss if this can't be turned around."
"It's one of the biggest issues that we have faced and we're just putting Gay Lea on notice that we're going to fight," says Temiskaming-Cochrane MPP John Vantof. "We're not just going to wave goodbye. We want to work with them, whether it's with them or with another cheese maker, but we're not letting Thornloe go easily or at all."
A meeting has been held with Gay Lea to see what their intentions are with the plant., however no details have emerged.