ICMSA: Current milk quota policies will bankrupt Europe’s dairy sector

THE dairy sector in Europe will face bankruptcy if the current policy of expanding milk quotas into a market where producer prices have collapsed continues, the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers has warned.

Jackie Cahill, president, said the European Commission admits that the situation will not correct itself in the short term without major changes, but it then proposes absolutely nothing that could be described as a major change.

“We get more of the same nonsense that has brought Europe’s dairy sector to its knees and those still talking about how abolishing quotas will give the scope for profitable extra output are now actively complicit in destroying their own sector.

”We are being set up for a WTO attack on our sector and those unwilling to see that will bear a terrible responsibility for what could happen to Ireland’s dairy sector. I challenge those who share ICMSA’s analysis to stand up and say so while there’s still time,” he said.

Mr Cahill said the latest report from the commission amounts to no more than an abdication of responsibility for a disaster that was entirely of its own making.

He said the commission has rightly identified the main element in the dairy sector collapse as the imbalance between supply and demand, but seems unable or unwilling to identify who primary responsibility.

Mr Cahill said the commission itself presided over the catastrophic mismatch between supply and demand and bears the primary responsibility for the situation.

It now appears to be in the process of washing its hands of this mess and pretending that some shambolic early retirement scheme can sort out the problem of over-supply. But there is not time for this kind of fantasy.