NEWS

Europe becomes milk dumping ground
By Chris McCullough

THOUSANDS of farmers across Europe have dumped millions of litres of milk in protest against continuing falling dairy prices.
This week farmers took to the fields in several EU Member States and spread milk onto the fields. They even dumped milk and burned straw in Brussels right outside Commission buildings in protest at the lack of action to help them.
The earlier announcement from EU Agriculture Commissioner, Mariann Fischer Boel, to allow Member States to pay temporarily aid of up to 15,000 euro to farmers seemed to go unheeded by the various organisations who called for the protests.
The farmers have vowed to continue dumping milk until the Comission listens and act to bring milk prices above their cost of production.
However, Commissioner Boel said she was doing all that was possible to help the crisis hit sector. This week she set out in detail the latest stage of the Commission's ongoing campaign to help European Union dairy farmers out of the current market crisis.
The package of measures, presented to the European Parliament, follows up the Commission's report from July and looks at both short-term measures and actions to secure the longer-term future of the dairy sector.

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September 25th 2009
September 18th 2009