EU tries to wean off dairy
They have already slashed annual spending from its €2,755 million level in 2004, and Thorkild Rasmussen, the head of the dairy sector in the EU Commission, has spelled out plans to reduce it further, to a miserly €400 million by 2013, when export refunds will end.
From where he was sitting at the recent ICOS annual dairy conference, it was pretty clear to him that milk processing companies and dairy farms will have to get bigger and fewer and more competitive, and more value must be added to milk from dairy farms, rather than simply turn it into butter and milk powder.
