EU dairy farmers cut off milk supply

More than 40,000 farmers in eight European countries have stopped supplying milk, exacerbating the severe milk crisis across Europe.

Overproduction in the dairy sector led to a crippling price collapse which sent many European dairy farmers out of business. The blame was pinned onto agriculture ministers who had allowed producers to increase the permitted volume of milk in an already saturated market despite industry demands for reduction.

Pascal Massol, president of the French Milk Producers' Association (APLI), said the current policy is a failure and as such, the dairy farmers have turned to the last resort by stopping their milk supply.

EU ministers must act at once to defuse the crisis, said Romuald Schaber, president of the European Milk Board (EMB).

The farmers want the ministers to tackle the core problem and implement an immediate reduction in the volume of milk to enable dairies to pay cost-covering milk prices as soon as possible, he said.

Schaber said the ministers must also hold talks with them to discuss how European milk production can be geared in the long term to supply and demand so as to ensure cost-covering producer prices for the dairy farmers.

He added that milk producers are prepared to shoulder the responsibility and control the supply personally. The EMB has drafted its demands and presented it to the ministers.

Erwin Schöpges of the Milk Producer Lobby (MIG) in Belgium said that the milk policy is also ruining milk producers in developing countries.

The reintroduction of the antiquated mechanism of export subsidies early in the year means that European milk is being sold at artificially cheap prices on the world market, destroying local markets in poor countries, Schopges said.