Dairy Cows Head For Slaughter As Milk Prices Sour

[Purveyor]

Source: Associated Press

(02-16) 02:06 PST Turlock, Calif. (AP) --

Hundreds of thousands of America's dairy cows are being turned into hamburgers because milk prices have dropped so low that farmers can no longer afford to feed the animals.

Dairy farmers say they have little choice but to sell part of their herds for slaughter because they face a perfect storm of destructive economic forces. At home, feed prices are rising and cash-strapped consumers are eating out less often. Abroad, the global recession has cut into demand for butter and cheese exported from the U.S.

Prices for milk now are about half what it costs farmers to produce the staple, and consumer prices are falling. Unless the market can be bolstered, industry officials project that more than 1.5 million of the nation's 9.3 million milking cows could be slaughtered this year as dairy operators look to cut costs and generate cash.

"This could destroy our dairy infrastructure," said Mike Marsh, CEO of the United Western Dairymen trade association.

Three months ago, mature milkers would sell for $2,500 to another dairy, but with nobody buying, dairymen are selling them on the beef market for only $1,100 each.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/02/16/national/a015805S01.DTL

[Dervill Crow]

1. This saddens me. nt

[Winterblues]

2. It is called Deflation and we are in Peril.

Whikle it may seem like a good deal for consumers at first, it is going to effect all business and that means jobs and or pay reductions.

[WriteDown]

3. Ironic...

I JUST had a nice cold glass of 1%.

[tridim]

4. Is ice cream still unfordable?

I don't even look any more because I can't afford paying $4.00 for a tiny carton. I already gave up drinking milk because it screws up my digestion and produces so much mucus it makes me nauseas.

[DLnyc]

82. Yes, B & J ice cream $5.19 a quart, cheapest butter $4.85 a pound

But farmers getting less for their milk? Go figure.

[HereSince1628]

5. Time to put the old girls to rest, just think of them as baby-boomers

and the guilt will wash away.

That would be half as sarcastic if it wasn't The American Way.

[jwirr]

6. Oh, oh! This means higher prices. I am assuming there are no more

price supports from the gov? This was the purpose of that law to keep dairy farmers from going broke and having a milk shortage.

[dixiegrrrrl]

36. Price supports ended 2001..Bushwacker strikes again.

http://mises.org/story/1101

[sybylla]

51. It doesn't mean higher prices

Dumping dairy cows onto the beef market drops the price of beef. And the milk market is already dropping - one of the reasons the farmers can't afford to keep the cows.

[jwirr]

67. Yes but a dead cow doesn't recover when the economy recovers.

[kestrel91316]

7. I quit buying the damned stuff when it hit $4.50 a gallon. I use

powdered milk, about a quart a week, primarily for putting in my coffee and tea.

It was weird last week, though - Von's or Ralph's (I forget which) had gallons on sale for $1.99, so I grabbed one.

[dixiegrrrrl]

34. I so hate to tell you this...

powdered milk and "non-fat milk solids" both heavily implicated in melamine.
Apparently most of the stuff comes from China.

which is the part of the story they are not telling us. china sends over zillions of pounds of
dried milk, whey, "milk solids" that are used intensively in so many foods over here.

That being said, we hardly ever drink the stuff, either. I use half N half in my coffee.
We save a ton on not buying cold cereal any more.

[kestrel91316]

52. I doubt the powdered milk I have bought in the past year has melamine.

Since the problem was found, and milk powder coming in from China is exhaustively tested, IIRC.

[KurtNYC]

57. agree - plus one of the things that pushed milk prices up

was that the importation of cheaper Chinese milk was greatly reduced following the melamine news.

[XemaSab]

8. I've noticed deep price cuts in a lot of groceries

:scared:

[closeupready]

33. So have I, and it's been going on for months now.

And I've also noticed some of the restaurants I go to have lowered prices, as well.

[durablend]

60. Haven't seen any of it here

If anything, prices are still heading up up up

[mbperrin]

69. Up in stores and restaurants!

Paid $5.27 for a gallon of Gandy's 2% at Albertson's last night, and all the menu prices have increased at Logan's and Buffalo Wild Wings.

[RebelOne]

76. Haven't seen any lower prices in my neck of the woods.

If anything, I noticed that many items have increased in price.

[wuushew]

9. This is good news

I eat a lot more hamburger than I do dairy products. As a consumer this is good for me.

[HubertHeaver]

18. No, it isn't good news. In the near term there will be plentiful

supplies of beef accompanied by somewhat lower prices. As soon as the cows are through the system, diminished supply allows for higher prices at the grocery store.

Ultimately this is very bad for consumers. Dairy products and beef products then become short-supplied.

[wuushew]

21. You don't know that for sure...time will tell

If beef prices stablize back to pre-glut levels I end up a net winner.

[AnneD]

38. No....

that is for sure. Brother has some cows and several neighbours are dairy farmers. That is the way it works. Farmers will cull the herd. Female milk cow's that had little bulls-those bulls will be sold. My brother has been going to auctions for years picking up these calves and raising them for beef for years. Last time things were this bad for the dairy business years back-he picked up a calf for $5 and we had beef for several families.

It is not economically feasible for them to keep feeding them if they will sell for below cost when you take them to market. And it takes time to rebuild you stock back up after you have old them off-so there you have it good in the short time bad in the long term.

[HubertHeaver]

48. You don't remember the Reagan-era dairy herd buyout?

That is precisely what happened.
Given the length of the beef production cycle, this kind of a glitch will take about 10 years to work its way through the system.

[veganlush]

10. I realize mine probably won't be a popular opinion here...

...but I for one am looking forward to the day, and I believe it's coming, when humans stop exploiting animals for food, especially considering that a plant-based diet is healthier. I am sympathetic to those people, especially the small farmers, who make their living with animals. I wonder if the falling prices could be due it part to the increase it popularity of products like SILK which more and more people are using in place of milk. The bottom line is that someday people will have evolved past animal exploitation. Why is it that man is the only animal that thinks he has to consume mothers milk well into adulthood? Milk is designed to make a baby animal grow as quickly as possible to a size that allows it to protect itself better from predators. In our society that is among the most obese, people are shying away from such calorie and fat dense products. It order to make milk more diet friendly, they've had to take the milk out of it! skim, 1%, 2% etc. all attempts to render milk "safe" for consumption. In the arena of big agribusiness especially, animals are treated as machines, slaves to their bodies, all to provide us with a diet that is inferior to a plant-based one. When the days comes that a majority switch away from animal consumption, health care costs will plummet. All of the top killers of people, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, etc. can be linked to an animal based diet.

[Missy Vixen]

12. I'm looking forward to the day

when those of us who choose to eat meat are no longer lectured by those who choose to not eat it.

[remoulade]

37. Thank you! Burgers are on me!

:D

[Confusious]

44. HAHA!

Me too!

[WriteDown]

16. Whole milk was a staple in people's diets...

in the 40's-60's and obesity was much less than today. Milk is not your culprit.

[Javaman]

23. my god, there is so much ignorance here. I don't know where to begin.

wow, just wow.

If you want me to refute your crazy argument I will gladly do so, but I frankly, don't believe I need to. Your post is so completely over the top, it fringes on crazy.

[Harry Monroe]

26. Mmmmmmm.....steak!!

Medium rare!! I respect your viewpoint, now respect mine as a meat-eater. I don't eat meat often, but when I do, I'd rather not have a side of lecture and guilt with it!! I'd prefer to eat it in peace!

[RaleighNCDUer]

31. A lot of self-justification there, with wrong information.

Most ANY mammal will happily lap up milk if it is available, particularly carnivores and omnivores (in which class humans belong) from my kitty up to bears. It is very natural for humans to consume flesh, as that is how we are evolutionarily designed. Not in the quantities that modern Western humans do, for sure, but it was the protein infusion of regular meat eating that created our big brains, separating us from our chimp-like ancestors (who were also omnivorous, just as our chimpanzee cousins are).

If the animal protein diet is so terrible, how have the Inuit survived with a diet that is literally 95% animal protein? In their traditional culture they might go months at a time eating nothing that is NOT animal protein - whether it be mammal (seal, whale, blubber, blood and flesh) or fish.

You know, don't you, that a far likelier suspect in the obesity epidemic is high fructose corn syrup, a plant sugar which metabolized differently than other sugars. The obesity epidemic did not exist for generations when people were drinking whole milk, eating meat at every meal, wolfing down 20oz steaks - it only started when HFCS replaced cane sugar in processed foods as a result of Castro nationalizing the Cuban sugar plantations.

Denying consumption of animals is denying the biological animal that you are. Everything about us is the result of 6 million years of omnivorous dining. Can we exist without meat? Only with great difficulty - we are not created to graze.

If you make a 'moral' choice to not eat meat, fine. But don't pretend it's at all normal or natural.

[Raster]

72. Something else to consider is how the animals we eat are fed and raised.

50 years ago, before the coronary disease epidemic, animals ate natural diets, devoid of corn.

[Missy Vixen]

73. Shhh! Don't tell anyone!

>far likelier suspect in the obesity epidemic is high fructose corn syrup, a plant sugar which metabolized differently than other sugars.

They just won't stop eating! That's the problem! It's not HFCS. HFCS is perfectly healthy, and doesn't cause the pancreas to rev like a Ferrari. Ohhh, nooooo. :sarcasm:

Thanks for such a great response; I'm only sorry I can't recommend an individual post.

[veganlush]

78. 'will happily lap up milk if it is available'...

...it that where our large brains got us? You mentioned you have a kitty. I have a dog. She's happy to see me when I get home, seems disappointed when we leave, shows fear in the presence of aggressive dogs, in short shows a range of feelings. Yeah, she would lap up milk if available too. She would probably go for a human steak if I gave her one, it's only natural, that's nature. But, as you pointed out, we've got these big brains now and we're putting them to good use. They took us to burning 'witches' at the stake and they got us beyond that. They took us to human slavery, where it was perfectly fine to buy and sell PEOPLE, break up families in the process, do want you want with them they're property. Our big brains got us past that too. My point is, acquiring a big brain was part of our evolution and it helped to usher in our societal evolution, so here we are. Scientists say that a pig is very comparable to a dog brain-wise. But tradition dictates that one animal is for companionship and the other is for meat (shoes,etc).

Tradition is what made the transition away from slavery so difficult. In modern animal husbandry, in big agribusiness, compassion for our four legged fellow mortals just isn't good for the bottom line. They are subjected to a life of deprivation. All of their NATURAL impulses are curtailed as they sit on steel wire in a space often too small to turn around in. They, like other animals, are hard-wired to have certain desires, such as nursing their young, running around outside, mating, etc. Instead they are forced to be meat machines, slaves of OUR desire. The notion that a switch away from animals is too difficult, because 'were not created to graze' c'mon! we put a man on the moon!-now without meat our big brains are reduced to figuring out how to graze? If I was a meat eater I still wouldn't eat caviar, the price, in money, is too high. I don't eat meat because the price, in needless animal suffering and environmental degradation, is too high.

I agree with you about high fructose corn syrup. The ideal diet is fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains, nuts and seeds, the fewer words on the ingredients panel the better, processed foods contain too many of the things that are hurting us. What's 'normal' and 'natural' is that we, with our big brains and our progressive society, move past the mistakes of the past and we do that by talking about them. I've had people tell me "don't tell me about what animals go through in factory farms, I won't be able to enjoy meat then". In other words, they want to be shielded from the truth, and make important decisions about life and our future and encourage needless suffering because it's too much trouble to explore healthier options. As pointed out above, by another DU'er, a plant-based diet is also way healthier for the planet and is the SINGLE MOST IMPACTFUL thing that the average person can do to help greatly on a range of issues from global warming, the economy, surface water pollution, world hunger, dependence on foreign oil, etc. all just by changing their diet-style. To make a one pound burger we invest the following: 12 pounds of grain, 2500 gallons of water and 55 square feet of rain forest!

[jmowreader]

79. Where did you get your numbers?

I went to a bunch of ag school websites to get some numbers on beef food and water consumption. I figured the University of Arkansas and the University of Nebraska would be good accurate sources for this information, since they teach people how to grow beef.

According to them, a 1000-pound beef cow needs 20 lbs of feed and 11 gallons of water per day. Assuming you feed nothing but corn, the cow stays at 1000 pounds its entire life and dresses out to 600 lbs hanging weight--they aren't born that big, so the numbers here are kinda skewed, but I didn't feel like figuring growth rates and such--and the cow grows over a 550-day (18-month) growing season, each pound of finished beef requires 11.91 pounds of grain and 10 gallons of water.

You may also be figuring in the water used to grow the grain and to process the meat, which you probably are. I did the numbers, though--2500 gallons water per pound of beef is 1.5 million gallons of water, or about 192,307 cubic feet of it. Or more than two Olympic-size pools. No way. Especially when you consider the cow only drinks 6000 gallons of it.

[veganlush]

81. John Robbins, heir-apparent to the Baskin-Robbins ice cream

...fortune, turned down that fortune and devoted his life to more important pursuits. He runs earthsave.org and his is an amazing story. It was his book, DIET FOR A NEW AMERICA written back in the '80's that turned me to vegetarianism and later vegan-ism. His father was Robbins, and Baskin was his uncle. I got that figure from a poster I got from his website, which I will try to paste up in this message. (don't know if I'll be able to do it) I imagine that the figure takes into account all aspects including water used in the waste disposal process in addition to, as you mentioned water used for grain crops fed to the cattle, and of course, water directly consumed my the animal. Ok I can't get the graphic into this message, but you can see it at earthsave.org

[Beaverhausen]

35. Health risks yes, and there are bad environmental impacts of meat-based diets

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x186952

:hi:

[AnneD]

45. One of the many ironic misconceptions....

when we lived on a farm....we ate more vegetables than anything else. Some of the best meals didn't have a speck of meat on the plate. That being said-when we had meat-we ate meat and didn't think twice about it. I have often said that if folks had to slaughter their own meat-less would be eaten. It did not cost us so much to eat meat. Chickens kept the garden free from bugs and ate veggies and some scraps mixed in with their feed. Hogs had scrapes. Cows, sheep and goats grazed and had some feed and scrapes. Now I might want to tell you-some of the scrapes were fruit from the fruit trees, the family table, the fields-nothing went to waste. And we swapped with neighbors. Only the current farm 'business model' is meat too expensive.

[flvegan]

41. As you can see, it wasn't.

Welcome to DU, and get used to that kind of backlash. I've been getting it for years.

:hi:

By the way, we have veggie/AR forum here on DU. Hope you visit!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topics&forum=231

[veganlush]

49. yes, i've been to that forum recently..

...and thank's for the welcome!:toast:

[Zhade]

83. Humans as a whole go veggie? Never going to happen. We're not wired that way.

But I'd be happy to eat vat-grown meat if it was safe.

[msongs]

11. umm no lower milk prices at stores in my part of SoCal - few lower prices on anything really nt

[nyc 4 Biden]

13. Buy Soy Milk

It's horrible what those dairy cows and their calves are subjected to.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIjanhKqVC4

ETA: It doesn't taste much different from skim or 1%. Comparing to whole milk is a different story.

[prairierose]

14. Yes, this is an indication of...

deflation. You notice the newspaper report does not mention that.

[Auggie]

15. "Destroy our dairy infrastructure" -- so we can import milk from China

:sarcasm:

[leftchick]

17. how come I still pay inflated prices for milk?

???

[bagimin]

20. $2.89 a gal

at Costco today. Hope it stays down as we use 5 or 6 per week.
Now why isn't gas falling?

[WriteDown]

22. 5 or 6 a week?

Yikes!!! :)

[kimmylavin]

27. Not so much.

My family of five went through about a gallon of milk a day.
Between cereal in the morning, not being allowed soda, and cookies and milk as dessert... it added up.

Just my husband and I probably drink 2 or 3 gallons a week.

[WriteDown]

28. I drink about a gallon a week, maybe....

but its just me and the dogs and there is no way they're getting any of my milk :).

edited for spelling.

[NashVegas]

70. When I Was a Teenager

I could have drank a 1/2 gallon a day. Probably only had about 1/3.

[leftchick]

29. I buy organic

which is about $4.00 a half gallon. I do it for my children's sake but I don't know how much longer we can afford it. :(

[DemWynner]

19. This means bad meat as well

Dairy cows are raised differently and feed differently than Feeder cattle. They will not be as good of a quality.

[Kali]

56. Not at all. Just watch the grade you buy and how you cook it. besides some WILL be fed out.

Older cows of any type make good hamburger and their meat is better flavored in general.

Us beef raisers are going to be the ones who suffer. Prices went in the toilet back in late November/early December and have bareley started back up. A mess o' dumped dairy cows ain't gonna help that.

[bitchkitty]

24. I don't feel sorry for those cows who will go to slaughter.

A few minutes of pain and death, compared to a live in being in a tiny cage, kept perpetually pregnant, and seeing their babies carted off for veal.

If I was a milk drinker, I would buy my own cow and treat her well. If there is a hell, factory farmers will be in the front row.

[Arugula Latte]

39. I wish there were a hell for factory farmers. I wish they could be kept in cages too small for them

to turn around in. I wish I could run that hell, so I could come by often and poke them with sharp sticks.

[Confusious]

46. perpetually pregnant

I realized a while back, that that was bullshit. A mammal female could produce milk long after her first pregnancy as long as its pumped on a regular basis.

I'm been out in the country, and driven through, and stopped at quite a few places, and touched and watched a lot of cows. None of them was pregnant. Just PETA propaganda.

[The Stranger]

53. That was the only part of it you take issue with?

Yet you still call it "bullshit" and "PETA propaganda" that some want to end the needless suffering of these animals?

What the fuck?

[bitchkitty]

63. Ah excuse me, I mixed two atrocitites.

Mares are kept perpetually pregnant to produce Premarin so us human women can stay young long after we're meant to.

I've never taken Premarin. I keep my skin supple with plenty of water and coconut oil. If I have a wrinkle or two, it's because I'm 53 years old and have lived my life.

[flvegan]

71. Not in the capacity demanded by the milk industry.

Fail.

[Tumbulu]

55. Yes, my 7 yr old daughter wants those guys to be in the same cage with W

and all I have to say is "that ice cream came from a poor feedlot cow" and she does not want it. Who would if you saw how horrible a life these poor animals have? One whiff of the stink of the air that they are forced to breath living in their own manure and that is all it takes.

And we had to work so hard to get a proposition passed here in Calif to just give the chickens, pigs and calves enough room to turn around, stand up and lie down. And these rabid money grabbing repugs all screamed bloody murder about how they would all go out of business.

[bird gerhl]

25. what a fucking waste

[Lost in CT]

30. Funny thing this will cause milk prices to rise once again. nt

[azurnoir]

32. If the price of milk is tanking

why is the price of cheese through the roof? It makes no sense I was going to buy an 8 oz pack of the shredded stuff to make tacos and the store brand was over $3, so WTF is going on with this? I am in MN so most dairy products are local and cheap

[sybylla]

54. Mainly that's due to the fact that

Cheese is made from milk bought a month to several months to even a year ago depending on the type and how long it was aged for. And, of course, cheese futures (the price someone is willing to pay for cheese in three months, let's say) are based on today's price of milk.

What all this points out is that our food system should not be treated as a commodity within our borders. We should be paying our farmers what it costs to produce our food, not what some uber-corporation is willing to pay for it. Stabilize the markets and you can stabilize the food supply. And in a tight economy, instead of selling off our diary cattle, farmers could be selling milk to the government to feed the poor instead of going out of business.

[azurnoir]

58. Your last sentence is especially true

we could be donating that milk both here in the US and abroad, and any "storage" problems could be cured by dehydration and or canning which might just provide a few jobs

[jedr]

40. I'll get a lot of flack for this one, but here it goes;

Farmers, especially dairy,are family owned and operated. They still use a business model from the turn of the last century (early 1900's) and tend to over produce (feeling that the harder they work , the more they'll make) and work against their own best interest. Not being able to afford an office building full of bean counters to graph out projected demand and alter supply to be able to maintain a profit, they turn out a much as they can. Our wonderful "friends" in the hedge-markets took commodities one by one and drove up the prices and then bailed when they got the return that they wanted and the markets crashed and it was never a true representation of supply and demand. What is happening is the natural response to this market condition. ( You don't want to be a farmer, unless working long hours of manual labor for nothing interest you.) I feel bad for them, but they are not the only industry to crash and burn of late. I've seen this happen many times before and I'm sure it will happen again. Farmers need to quit fighting each other and banned together if they don't want to be turned into factory farms. The fine points of this could be discussed forever,but as I said, it's nothing new.

[Tashca]

59. No flak from me

You are exactly right about the hedge funds and their few weeks of taking huge profits out of Agriculture. This is just the beginning of a coming reckoning in Ag. We are just now stepping into a deflationary time.....
Dairy Farmers in most cases are the last of the true family farms here in Iowa....no big deal..their land will be taken over by bigger grain farmers. Dairy is a very hard way to make a living. If they close down....they will not come back. At least as family farms they won't.

If this escalates this will depress the beef market no doubt....which in turn deflates the grain markets. It's like watching a slow moving disaster.

[jedr]

62. at least they (farmers) were able to make some money for;

awhile....got caught up on some bills and maybe able to buy a piece of new equipment. It's a hard life for them ,but as you point out , it's just a matter of time. If anyone needs a union , it's farmers..... On edit...to whomever, thanks for the heart!:toast:

[flvegan]

42. On the bright side, I hope it destroys the veal industry.

Miserable fuckers.

Watch this:

Douchebag says "Mmm...veal...."

[WriteDown]

47. Mmm...veal....

Half sicilian and still crave veal parmigiana on Sundays.

[bitchkitty]

66. So you don't mind being called a douchebag? n/t

[WriteDown]

75. If it allows me to eat veal....

call me whatever :evilgrin:

[bitchkitty]

77. I have nothing but pity for you.

You are obviously well educated, intelligent, but you have a very cold place in your chest where your heart used to be.

I'll pray for your soul - I'm not being facetious. I will pray for your enlightenment.

[BrklynLiberal]

43. Very sad news.....

[Mari333]

50. god, Im glad I became a vegan.

its paying off now.

[ozu]

61. lactose intolerant

so I only drink soy milk. I do, however, eat beef and lots of it, so I guess as an individual consumer this benefits me.

[applegrove]

64. I spend over $4.00 per 2 L at the grocery store. I can spend just over $5.00

for 4L at 7/Eleven. Guess where I shop most often for milk. Don't know why the price discrepancy. But there you go.

[tandot]

65. If the farmers get only $0.80 for each gallon, why is regular milk around $4,00?

from the article:

"As of Feb. 2, the price farmers receive for a gallon of milk has been 80 cents a gallon, less than half the $1.65 a gallon the California Department of Food and Agriculture estimates it costs to produce."

I usually buy organic milk which I just got for $6.99 per gallon yesterday. The regular milk was around $4.00 here in Northern California.

[StarryNite]

68. This breaks my heart on so many levels.

:cry:

[Jack_DeLeon]

74. Does this mean hamburger meat will get cheaper? Yummy

:)

[marshall]

80. Silver Lining: less greenhouse gas emisions from all the cow farts

I suspect this has more to do with the tax that is rumored to be levied soon on cattle to offset all the environmental problems caused by their constant farting.