A Canadian dairy farmer is speaking out about the legal way of getting rid of extra milk, which is called “dumping.”
In an emotional video that was posted to TikTok but has since been taken down, Jerry Huigen from Dunville, Ontario, points to a drainpipe and says that because of government rules, he has to dump 30,000 litres of extra milk at the end of the month.
“Right now, we’ve reached our goal. “The government and the DFO (Dairy Farmers of Ontario) have rules about it,” says Huigen. “It makes me sad.”
Supply management is a system that controls dairy production in Canada. It was put in place in the early 1970s to deal with production surpluses.
The Canadian Dairy Commission (CDC) sets quotas for how much milk can be made each month based on how much milk is expected to be needed. Farmers only get paid for the milk they make up to their quotas, so any extra milk is thrown away.
Huigen says that his 260 dairy cows make more milk in the winter than is needed, but he can’t sell it.
Huigen takes a sip of raw milk from a glass and says, “They make us throw it away.”
Last November, the CDC agreed to raise the price of milk at the farm gate by about 2.2%, or just under two cents per litre, starting on February 1, 2023. This happened after prices went up by 2.5% in September and 8.4% in February of last year.
“When I get my hair cut, people say, ‘Wow, $7 for a little bit of milk,'” he said. I say, “Well, you need to go higher up because we don’t have a voice anymore as dairy farmers,” says Huigen. He also says that it’s hard to grow his business because any money he makes “goes down the drain.”
“How dare you put this milk on the market for $7 per litre and think that’s okay when there are single mothers with no extra money and kids at the SickKids Hospital who could use this?”
“But this isn’t something we’re supposed to talk about,” he says.
Maxime Bernier, the leader of the People’s Party of Canada, tweeted in response to the video that his party was the only one willing to get rid of the “costly and wasteful supply management system” and that all the other parties were “in the pocket of the dairy mafia.”
