European farmers protest milk prices below 75 % of the cost of production

Here’s an excerpt from a story by Stephen Castle, from NY Times. Note that the story says Europe is planning to phase out quotas by 2015. What does that imply about the future of supply management in Canada’s dairy industry?

A farmer sprayed raw milk on policemen during a protest against falling milk prices outside the E.U.’s headquarters in Brussels, where agricultural ministers discussed its policies at an emergency meeting. Photo George Gobet/Agency France Press/Getty Images, via NY Times

“BRUSSELS — After months of complaints by European dairy farmers angry over low prices, protesters in Brussels on Monday poured milk onto the streets, hurled eggs and other missiles, and started fires that filled the air with black smoke.

Police helicopters hovered overhead as hundreds of tractors — and some cattle — blockaded the area outside the European Union’s headquarters while agriculture ministers met in an emergency meeting.

The gathering of ministers, convened after pressure from France, failed to produce any breakthroughs apart from a decision to set up a committee to report on the dairy industry in June.

Monday’s protest was the latest by farmers who dumped around three million liters of milk on fields in Belgium last month.

Manna Storehouse SWAT-raid trial to be videoed by Courtroom View Network

The Manna Storehouse story has generated a lot of traffic on the Bovine, since it broke last December. People will want to know how the trial goes.

October 6, 2009 – Cleveland, OH – Courtroom View Network (CVN) of New York City has announced that it will video record the trial of Stowers vs. Ohio Department of Agriculture and Lorain County Health Department, according to today’s Journal of Whole Food and Nutritional Health. The trial will be held on October 8 and 9 at the Lorain County Courthouse, 226 Middle Avenue in Elyria, Ohio.

The court case is the result of a before-Christmas 2008 Lorain County SWAT-team raid on The Manna Storehouse, an organic food coop in LaGrange, Ohio owned and operated by John and Jackie Stowers. The Stowers and their ten children and grandchildren were detained in one room of their home for six hours while the sheriff’s team confiscated sixty boxes of fresh farm food, computers, phones and business records. The food included USDA-certified meat from the Stower’s children’s mini-farm and the nearby Amish community. The Stowers were suspected of not having a retail food license, and the raid was instigated by the Ohio Department of Agriculture and the Lorain County Department of Health.