FIRST READING: Dairy farmer decries mandatory ‘milk dumping’ to keep prices high

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As Canadian consumers are hit by generationally high rates of food inflation, an Ontario dairy farmer posted a viral video Monday documenting how he was being forced by federal authorities to dump a swimming pool’s worth of excess milk.

“I dumped 30,000 litres of milk, and it breaks my heart,” says dairy farmer Jerry Huigen in a five-minute TikTok video that has already been viewed more than a million times across various social media platforms.

Milk-dumping has actually been a regular feature of the Canadian dairy sector for at least the last 50 years, and it is done very deliberately to maintain high prices for Canadian milk.

Ever since the 1970s, Canadian dairy farmers have been subject to a state-sanctioned cartel that artificially limits supply in order to drive up prices and ensure profitability for farmers.

Each month, the Canadian Dairy Commission dictates the precise amount of milk to be produced in Canada, which is then observed via a strict system of production quotas across the country’s 10,000 dairy farms.