The Dairy Coalition has unveiled a 10-point plan that it said would help secure the long-term future of the British dairy industry. The plan was decided after a major meeting of the Coalition, and has been agreed to by all its members, including the NFU, NFU Cymru, NFU Scotland, FFA, TFA, WFU and the RABDF.

The plan aims at building a “fair and functioning marketplace”, and will focus on three key areas - exposing bad practices, redefining and empowering the farmers’ role in the supply chain, and ensuring the supply chain is transparent and fair. Part of the plan will now also involve promoting British cheese, including calls for own-label supermarket cheese to be British.

The points detailed under the plan:

• Expose those whose damaging behaviour undermines the liquid milk market.
• Work with milk buyer farmer representatives to ensure that representation is professional, independent and democratic, so that farmers’ interests are protected.
• Set out a roadmap to capture the maximum opportunity for Producer Organisations to rebalance the negotiating power within the milk supply chain and assist farmers wanting to set up POs or other collaborative organisations within the dairy sector.
• Work to finalise the code of good practice for dairy contracts.
• Develop a process to monitor and report on the implementation of the Code of Good Practice for Dairy Contracts, to ensure its earliest and complete adoption.
• Encourage all milk buyers to develop their own appropriate and transparent milk procurement and pricing models that are equitable for all parties and cover farmers’ production costs. Clearly, the coalition doesn’t seek to say what that model should be, but we want to see all milk buyers working to create their own models that deliver a fair and sustainable price for farmers.
• Expose bad practice or non-compliance with the Code of Good Practice and irresponsible behaviour in the milk market by developing a whistle-blower mechanism for farmers.
• Campaign to promote British cheese and other dairy products to consumers and to retailers, both in the domestic market and abroad.
• Work with DairyCo so farmers can utilise relevant market information published by DairyCo such as up-to-date global trends, league tables and dairy market predictions.
• Prepare an ambitious strategy for the UK dairy industry’s future without EU milk quotas, which takes full advantage of growing domestic and global demand for dairy products.

  NamNews - Tuesday 14th August 2012

  
  

   

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