Spilled Milk
June 3rd, 2008 by Jonathan
Here’s how hard it is to be a dairy farmer–even when you’re on strike, you still have to get up at 4 in the morning to milk the cows. After all, they’re not gonna milk themselves…
I mention this because Germany’s dairy farmers are now striking. And here’s the part I’m crying over: The farmers are now getting the milk (so the cows don’t, you know, fill up) and then dumping it down the drain or pouring it into fields.
The New York Times reports: 10.6 mil gallons, or 60 percent of Germany’s production was dumped last Wednesday. By Friday, 95 percent of German dairy farmers had committed to join the strike, which is spreading throughout Europe.
Who’s to blame for this wanton waste? The farmers? The EU for deciding to raise production quotas? Globalization? NAFTA? (OK, maybe not that one.)
Germany’s Agriculture minister supports the strike. Wasted Food, however, cannot support the tactics. How about donating the milk? If dairy farmers are gonna strike, they may as well go whole hog: Call it The People’s Milk and give it to those in need. At the very least, they could make a whole lot of cats happy.
Stumble it! | Posted in International, Farm |
Oh, this makes my stomach drop. Though I must say, I love the photo.
Perfectly good milk wasted — you’re right, bring in the cats. It also makes me ill when animals are slaughtered due to possible infection (bird flu, etc), and when meat is trashed due to recalls, etc. At least in those cases it’s done in the name of public health, but it’s still such a horrible waste of both lives and food.
At least if they pour it on the fields, it isn’t completely wasted. It’s more like…composted. It’ll enrich the soil.
reminds me of a scene in the movie, “life and debt” about the economy in Jamaica. There’s a scene where dairy farmers open the spigots of their milk tanks and just let it soak into the ground. Why?? because the Jamaican government has agreements with the world bank to buy powdered dry milk from the US and Canada bacause of aid that Jamaica received years ago and to sell it cheaper than fresh, local milk. I don’t know if this still happens, as the movie is about 6 years old.
On the flip side, dairy farmers deserve a living wage for the hard work that they do, so maybe a strike will work to put pressure on the EU to increase the price of milk per liter. We need dairy farmers to continue farming, not become poor supplying people with good food. Also, even though it is wasted milk, I like to think that I see all of life from a perspective of abundance, instead of one of contracted limitation. I have confidence that the German farmers and their cows will survive this hardship.
I also saw Life and Debt and was thinking the same thing. That milk has to be able to be used somehow!
The dairy farmers in Germany get very little for the milk their cows produce.
The reason is that there are very few dairy companies left, most have been bought out in the past decades.
The remaining few dictate low prices to the dairy farmers who have but few options left unless they want to set up a booth and sell their milk directly to customers.