Dairy Farmers of Ontario (DFO) says they are going to look into its policy to deal with emergencies similar to what was seen over the winter storm which forced producers to dump thousands of litres of milk.
Farmers across Ontario were faced with the difficult decision to dump their product, farmers such as Doug Johnston who has never done it once.
“This is once in a lifetime, in 35 years I’ve never dumped milk because they couldn’t get here. I think it was handled as good as it could but a spot where we could definitely improve both on the board side which is the buyer of our milk and producers on why it had to happen” said Johnston.
The response from DFO was announced during Dairy Day at Grey-Bruce Farmers Week where board member Mark Hamel admitted they were not prepared for such an emergency and wished they had better communicated with producers.
Johnston says as tough as it is to dump product, its what they had to do.
“It totally sucks pouring milk down the drain but it was the right thing to do because its a perishable product and we can’t keep it any longer than we can. It was a situation the milk board and nobody has ever gone through before. There was a lot of confusion.”
DFO has already jumped to reimburse the near 45% of Ontario producers who were forced to dump milk, covering the loss with an expected reduction to the milk price of around $2.50 per hectolitre.
The dumping of milk over the storm is not expected to have any effect on consumers.
