China farmers kill cows as milk price plunges

In an unprecedented campai-gn, scores of Chinese farmers dumped tonnes of milk and killed their own cows to protest against falling milk prices, prompting auth-orities to intervene and take steps to support the dairy industry.

“A tonne of milk has to be discarded each day,” dairy farmer Pei Shuke in east China’s Shand-ong Province said adding, “this desperate thing rarely happened before.”

To recover their costs, some dairy farmers are feeding the milk to calves, or simply throwing out the nutritious liquid. Some have even killed their cows to prevent further losses.

Following the incident, the ministry of agriculture promised measures to boost incomes of dairy farmers.

The ministry encourag-es dairy firms to increase purchasing, starts dairy production monitoring on a weekly basis, and strengthens policy support for the dairy industry, the ministry said.

The ministry said it had talked to major dairy firms and urged them to purchase more milk, stabilise prices and safeguard interest of dairy farmers.

The ministry will wo-rk together with other central government dep-artments to help the dairy farmers, it said.

In March 2014, foreign milk prices began to fall drastically due to overproduction. Many dairy companies resorted to cheap overseas sources and limited purchases from domestic suppliers, causing dairy prices to dip to new lows, the report said.