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After weeks of buttering up Quebec's Agriculture Minister, the province's powerful dairy farmers scored an important victory, convincing the government to extend a ban on butter-colored margarine. The decade-old ban was to have been lifted earlier this month after the Quebec cabinet passed an order-in-council to bring Quebec onside with new provincial trade rules. Prince Edward Island and Quebec are the only provinces which still prohibit the sale of butter-colored margarine. But Quebec's 11,000 dairy farmers won a reprieve when Agriculture Minister Guy Julien announced that the government was going to launch a round of consultations on the plan to lift the ban on butter-colored margarine. A final decision will not be made known until at least this summer. Producers and packagers of margarine are accusing Julien of making a "back-room" deal with Quebec dairy farmers, who account for half of the milk used to chum out $287-million in butter sold annually in Canada. Among those affected by this decision is Unilever Canada Ltd., which netted almost 55% of the $286-million in margarine sales in Canada in 1996. Its Thomas J. Lipton plant in northwest Toronto produced about 45-million kilograms of margarine-worth $159-million. Its top-selling brand names included Becel, Monarch, and Fleischmann's. In Quebec, the majority of the $60-million worth of margarine sold last year was manufactured by Unilever Canada, Ault Foods of Toronto, and Margarine Thibault Inc., of Trois-Rivieres. Meanwhile, butter sales were almost $95-million in Quebec last year. Margarine manufacturers say that Quebec's ban on butter-colored margarine increases their costs because they must produce two kinds of margarine: the off-white spread sold in Quebec and the butter-yellow product sold in almost the rest of the country. A dairy farmer official countered by saying that nearly $16-million in butter sales would be lost if the ban was lifted. The spokesperson added that while nearly all butter sold in Quebec is made from milk in the province, the main ingredient used in margarine is vegetable oil, and it's not produced in Quebec.