Were Cali Dairy Cows Slaughtered to Raise the Price of Dairy?
Sadly but surely, the words "dairy" and "disaster" have become synonymous, thanks to the corrupt, abusive practices of dairy corporations and lack of ample regulations within the dairy industry. The horror stories are sinking to a new level of unimaginable disgust. Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro, a Seattle-based law firm with an L.A. office, recently filed a lawsuit against milk conglomerate Cooperatives Working Together (CWT), alleging that California dairy farmers conspired to illegally drive up the cost of of milk and cheese products by killing over 500,000 healthy dairy cows.
The lawsuit claims that several prominent dairy companies, like National Milk Producers Federation, Dairy Farmers of America and Land O'Lakes, formed CTW with the intent of fixing the price of milk and cheese in the U.S., according to TreeHugger. CTW's alleged scheme netted over $9.5 billion in profit, as a decrease in the dairy market between 2003 and 2010 resulted in higher prices for said goods.
Compassion Over Killing, a nonprofit animal advocacy organization based in Washington, D.C., made the initial discovery of the systematic slaughtering in California and called upon Seattle attorney Steve Berman. He filed suit, alleging that "the cooperatives got together and instituted what we'll call a killing program; they retired cows," according to KOMO News. Per Berman, milk producers called the slaughter "dairy herd retirement," but the attorney believes the program was designed to bamboozle consumers and profit from their demand. "Using their own numbers, we calculated conservatively that (they) raised the price of milk over a seven-year period by $10 billion," Berman said.
In response to the allegations, CTW said the following in a statement.
"The program was designed and has always been operated in a manner fully consistent with the anti-trust laws of the United States. The lawsuit filed yesterday in California at the instigation of a west coast animal rights group is without merit. National Milk Producers will vigorously defend its actions and those of its member cooperatives and their producers in this lawsuit and expect that those actions will ultimately be vindicated.”
Berman says the cooperative ended the dairy herd retirement program in late 2010.
