Table of Contents
Pickles
In Canada, in 2025, there is an issue about Bick’s “pickles”.
Pickling is a method of food preservation and storage by storing food in a liquid. The Wikipedia entry pickling discusses two methods that use liquids that are acidic or high in salt, or both that liquids inhibit most microscopic organisms. The liquids are known:
In Canada, like the USA, pickles means, basically, pickled cucumbers. Cucumbers, the major ingredient, are fermented by lactobacillus bacteria and immersed in vinegar and water. Pickles can be made with household equipment in modern kitchens or by industrial methods. Industrial manufacturers will be more likely to inoculate the cucumbers with a cultivated strain of bacteria to keep the product standard. The fluid is brined with salt, and other dry ingredients added to the fluid: spices and other ingredients (e.g. dill seeds, or flowers).
The cucumbers absorb salt from the brine as they turn into pickles. This normally results in daily percentage rating of over 15% sodium in the nutritional (“Food Facts”) label on the pickle jar – i.e. “a lot”. Most pickles are “fully” fermented. Not as salty = lower sodium. Pickles have been a salty product for decades, partly because of the method of production, partly by tradition, and partly by consumer preference.
Bick’s and Canadian Tariffs
Bick’s is a brand with a large market share in the markets for pickles –
- Canadian grocery retail stores, and
- the wholesale market.
The business of making pickles and the Bick’s brand were owned by a company founded by Canadians and operated in Canada. The company was sold to Kraft Foods Canada in 1966. The buyer was or became the Canadian subsidiary of an American conglomerate. The Bick’s brand and business were owned by the American conglomerates J.M Smucker 2004-2024 and Treehouse Foods since 2024. Wikipedia notes “Since 2011, Bick’s products are imported from the United States and marketed by the company’s Markham, Ontario, based head office.” The labels on containers of Bick’s brand pickles, as of late August 2025, identify the contents as a product of the USA.
The retail chains in the Canadian grocery market are mainly owned by Canadian capital interests. The West0n/Loblaw and Sobey chains have store brands of pickles. There are competing pickle brands and food product brands that include pickles- e.g. Western Family.
When the US government began to levy tariffs on goods imported from countries outside the US in 2025, Canada levied counter-tariffs on goods. By August 10, 2025 Safeway stores (part of the Sobeys chain) in Edmonton Alberta did not have Bick’s pickles available for sale. The CBC reported:
At several Safeway grocery stores in Edmonton, a sign on the shelf reads “Bick’s pickles are currently unavailable as an unfortunate impact of tariffs. We are pleased to offer a selection of alternatives for your shopping convenience.”
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/bicks-pickles-tariffs-canadian-stores-1.7605005?cmp=rss
Safeway did not want to pay the tariff or increase the price of Bick’s pickles to pass the counter-tariff on to consumers. The mechanism of taking the product off of store shelves was not clear. Bick’s CEO Steven Oakland made statements when approached by the media:
“I think a lot of retailers feel that 25 per cent tariff makes them just too expensive frankly,” Oakland said, adding that retailers started reaching out to him with cost concerns at the start of the trade war.
“The food business is a low-margin, high-volume business. And so there isn’t 25 per cent either on the retailer side or the manufacturing side. So that has, in some cases, really inhibited the retailers’ availability to justify carrying them.”
Oakland estimates that Bick’s is still available in 70 per cent of the Canadian retail environment but said the company has been doing outreach to try and change the Canadian counter tariff, including reaching out to the governor of Illinois.
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While the pickles are assembled in Green Bay, Wis., Oakland said the company buys 11 million pounds of Ontario cucumbers every year and said all the lids on the jars come from an Ontario manufacturer.
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Bick’s began as a Canadian company, but Oakland says it was later acquired by a U.S. company and production was moved south of the border around 2014.
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“We continued to prioritize Canadian cucumbers for that product. [It’s] why we went to a Canadian lid supplier…. It’s just been an intertwined business and now we’ve got a border dispute that just makes that transfer back and forth across the border expensive,” he said.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/bicks-pickles-tariffs-canadian-stores-1.7605005?cmp=rss
Bick’s pickles are made by putting raw cucumbers in brine in a plant in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The fact that Bick’s buys cucumbers grown in Canada by Canadian farmers doesn’t change how or where cucumbers become pickles. The cucumbers were substantially transformed when they were processed in the USA. Bick’s did not mark the pickles as “made in Canada” or “product of Canada”. The terms are defined in a Canadian law, which interpreted and explained by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.
Made in Canada
When a food undergoes processing which changes its nature and becomes a new product bearing a new name commonly understood by the consumer, (for example, salad, pot pie, sausage, pizza, beer), it is considered to have undergone substantial transformation.
https://inspection.canada.ca/en/food-labels/labelling/industry/origin-claims/frequently-asked-questions Made in Canada
Product of Canada:
“All or virtually all” means that all the significant ingredients in a food product are Canadian in origin and that non-Canadian material is negligible in the food. Ingredients in a food that are present at very low levels and that are not generally produced in Canada, including spices, food additives, vitamins, minerals, and flavouring preparations, may be used without disqualifying the food from making a Product of Canada claim. Foods such as oranges, cane sugar, and coffee, which are not grown in Canada, may be considered minor ingredients when present in low amounts. Generally, the percentage referred to as “very little” or “minor” is considered to be less than 2% of the product.
https://inspection.canada.ca/en/food-labels/labelling/industry/origin-claims/frequently-asked-questions Produced in Canada
Cucumbers, some Canadian in origin, are transformed into pickles when brined in the USA. The cucumbers are not further transformed by being sent and billed to retail chains.
Bick’s pickles were still on the shelves in many retail grocery stores in Victoria, BC in late August 2025. Thrifty Foods, the Sobey company in BC still had some.
On August 22, 2025 the Prime Minister of Canada announced that counter-tariffs would not apply to goods imported from the USA exempted under the 2020 United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement after September 1, 2025.
Will Trump threaten to make Canadians pay more for
- access to the US markets, or
- buying products produced by American businesses?
He says he can do both, at the same time. The MAGA edition of trickle-down economics with tariffs, isolation from the rest of the world, and exciting new policies like the use of the military to control America.
Less Sodium
For a couple of years I bought “50% the salt of our regular pickles” Bick’s pickles – usually “50% the salt of regular” Bick’s garlic dill pickles. The nutritional labels for whole garlic dill pickles identified a serving as one piece (1 pickle?), weighing 41 grams (1.6 US ounces). Whole dill pickles are not all exactly the same size. The stated sodium content for one serving, regular salt, is 368 milligrams. The half salt version is 170 milligrams. The half the salt product was available for garlic dill “Sandwich Slicers”. 1 serving of garlic dill sandwich slicers is identified as 2 slices, weighing 33 grams (1.2 ounces), with 135 milligrams of sodium.
There are pickles on the market lower in sodium than Bick’s and other American style pickles. Pacific West Imports Group Ltd., an entity established in Canada, (head office in Victoria), trading as Euro Goods, markets Polish Dill Pickles processed in Poland. The nutritional label on the label of a 900 milliliter jar identifes 1 serving as 100 grams. The sodium content in a 100 gram serving is 320 milligrams. The comparison in terms of 41 gram servings:
| Euro Good Polish dill | Bick’s “half the salt” garlic dill |
| 131 milligrams sodium | 170 milligrams sodium |
The Polish dill is, perhaps, not brined as long as an American garlic dill, and is flavoured with different spices. Nearly the same price as Bick’s dills.
Made in a Central European country that has good relations with Canada, tasty, low sodium.