Stop Throwing Out Massive Quantities of Milk While Children Go Hungry

[Panich52]

Care2 petition

Dairy farmers in the northeast United States are making too much milk – but instead of giving the extra they won't use to children who are going hungry, they are dumping the perfectly good milk into manure pits.

So far, they have wasted 600,000 pounds of milk.

Chris started a Care2 petition urging the Department of Agriculture to stop dairy farmers from contaminating and destroying precious food that could be used to feed children in need. Will you sign it?

This isn't the first year dairy farmers have wasted huge quantities of milk, but a continuing and increasing trend: so far this year, farmers have dumped 31% more milk than over the same time period last year.

It is inexcusable for factory farms to destroy perfectly good milk when children are starving. More than 8,000 girls and boys worldwide die every day because they can't get enough to eat – and millions here in the United States will go to bed hungry tonight.

It doesn't have to be this way. The government has the ability to set limits on how much milk dairy farmers can simply throw away. If they put the right rules and incentives in place, dairy farmers will stop producing too much milk and provide surplus goods towards solving our nation's food crisis instead.

Sign here:
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/268/606/972/tell-us-dairies-to-stop-wasting-milk/

[d_r]

1. i think

and I can be wrong about this, but I think this started in the Reagan administration. That's where I think it began.

School lunch and the USDA commodities program that brought food to poor folks helped farmers also by stabilizing prices to make it worth their while.

Remember Reagan and the whole "ketchup counts as a vegetable" in school lunch. I don't think he was just at war with poor people but also with family farmers. Remember all the family farm losses that happened, the farm aid concerts and so on. I think that is one of the reasons we have more big corporation factory farms today.

Anyway, government cheese. I haven't seen any government cheese in a while. Do they still have government cheese? It used to be poor folks and senior citizens could get those USDA commodities, not just cheese and butter, but things like canned vegetables, peanut butter, even things like canned pork. Is that still possible?

[GreatGazoo]

2. Farmers are the new "teachers" -- Everyone wants to tell them what to do now

The milk business is convoluted. Costs are above revenue for NE dairy farms because cheaper milk is shipped in from the West coast.

Until we really understand how their business works we shouldn't be telling them to give their milk away free:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/04/nyregion/04towns.html

[geek tragedy]

3. who's offering to pay to pick it up, package it, and distribute it while maintaining

the proper environmental controls to ensure safety?

[TexasProgresive]

10. That's the truth of it.

While some blame the farmers it is not their fault. The cows have to be milked and the milk must move into processing and packaging or into the sewer.

[underahedgerow]

4. Cow milk is for cows. Humans shouldn't be drinking it as a regular beverage to begin with. It's

weird and creepy. Seriously, gallons of milk being consumed by families and kids is just....... really bizarre! They should be drinking water instead, and eating proper fruit and veg for their protein needs.

Not to even mention that US cow's milk is so chock full of hormones and nasty antibiotics, as well as the entire process of keeping poor cows just to be milked as an industry is strange to conceive.

The USA is the only nation where consumers consider milk to be consumable as a beverage. It's more natural as a condiment and addition to the diet, not a staple.

[snooper2]

11. I guess you don't

Got Milk?

[rsexaminer]

5. It's not..

just milk, it's all food. The food waste in this country is pathetic.

[jwirr]

6. The first milk dump I remember was back in the 50s. They dumped the excess milk to stabilize

the price of milk. It was either that or farmers would end up going out of business. Either way it would have meant less milk for sale to the consumers. That is why the government has tried various ways of supporting the price of farm products.

[GreatGazoo]

7. Local NE processing plants don't have the capacity to process the glut

They are smaller than the plants in Idaho and the West. Prices are plummeting. During the summer, without schools forcing milk on kids there is less "demand" (but cream/butter will go up due to ice cream season).

Dairy farmers say a massive milk glut across the Northeast has compelled Dairy Farmers of America to charge them extra to find a home for it. Some farms were even asked by the national cooperative to dump their milk during the holiday season, when milk processors were shut down.

The newly imposed milk charge of 50 cents per hundredweight, which took effect in October, has affected all farmers who are members of DFA, according to Jon R. Greenwood, owner of a 1,200-cow farm in Canton who is a member of the cooperative. He said the charge has been needed by the farmer-owned cooperative to cover the cost to transport and dispose of the glut of milk that New York processors can’t take in. The cooperative has been forced to spend more to transport milk longer distances to plants in other states and sell it at discount prices, he said.
...
He said DFA has not yet signalled when the extra charge will be lifted, but it has made doing business more challenging for dairy farmers. Milk prices are projected to drop on a monthly basis until the spring, he said, but that decline should be partly offset by lower feed prices.

“It’s still going to be a tougher year, based on everything I’m seeing about projections,” Mr. Greenwood said. “But it’s all going to depend on how long it hangs on. I hope that we get over this hump and don’t have to dump any more milk — that’s the last thing we want to do.”

http://www.watertowndailytimes.com/article/20150107/NEWS03/150109198

Happening worldwide:

Canada:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/milk-surplus-forcing-canadas-dairy-industry-to-dump-supply/article25030753/

China
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericrmeyer/2015/01/19/chinese-milk-is-being-dropped-in-the-fields/

[Facility Inspector]

8. Most food is poison

[Initech]

9. John Oliver nailed it last night: