Farmers Forum staff
GUELPH — Remember when cartons of cigarettes were a favourite target of retail thieves in Ontario? It was a staple product, compact and sinfully expensive as a result of government taxes. Reports of stolen tobacco aren’t so common anymore.
Stolen butter makes bigger headlines now — at least in Guelph where police have been dealing with a wave of nine brazen butter thefts at city grocery stores over the last ten months.
Two of the incidents occurred last month. On Oct. 12, two men entered a grocery store on Speedvale Avenue East, loaded three cases of butter worth approximately $936 into a cart and exited through a receiving door. Four days later, a similar theft took place at another store on Eramosa Road, where four cases of butter valued at $958 were stolen.
Many retail store owners tell employees not to intervene, allowing thieves to walk and walk out unaccosted.
The suspects, described as brown-skinned males in their 40s, were seen fleeing in a white sedan, police said.
The most valuable haul taken by the thieves was last Christmas Eve when a store lost $1,000 worth of butter. Pro-active police went to a second grocer they suspected could be also be a target and arrested three men loading up butter in the parking lot, The Toronto Star reported. Police arrested three Brampton men aged 40, 29 and 25. All men are now missing after not showing up for a court date earlier this year.
Butter can be frozen for storage. It’s a hot commodity in the food-preparation and baking industries — and with consumers generally — and it’s believed that thieves would have no trouble unloading the stolen butter at a discount.
