California Dairies: Not Above Driving Up Prices and Killing Cows To Do It, Lawsuit Alleges
It's easy for us all to chalk up the inflation of prices for our most basic grocery items to the economic downturn. We see a carton of ice cream getting smaller and think, "Well, there's just another way for Dryers to gouge us." But, what if you found out that it might not be old Uncle Sam's fault, but the dairy farms hoping to bank on your economic-slump tunnel vision?
Animal rights group Compassion Over Killing has revealed to the public that our healthy milk producing friends, the dairy cows, have been calculatedly "weeded" out over the last seven years or so, according to a lawsuit that they filed on Monday. Their research claims that more than half a million U.S. dairy cows were slaughtered over seven years to artificially lower the supply of milk and drive up cost to the consumer. COK (yes, that's really the acronym, unfortunately) brought their case to Seattle attorney Steve Berman who is now suing Cooperatives Working Together who's members are dairy companies and trade groups.
Beyond theg abhorrent animal rights violations alleged in this suit, Berman is responding primarily to the anit-trust issues that are in question here. Over the last seven years, Berman stated in an interview with KOMO, "the cooperatives got together and instituted what we'll call a killing program; they retired cows." Berman said the milk producers called it "dairy herd retirement", but he insists (and is fighting from the standpoint) that it was a way to artificially decrease supply, inflate prices, and basically cheat consumers to fatten their own wallets.
"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 these allegations by Berman's firm, CWT retorted with:
"The program was designed and has always been operated in a manner fully consistent with the antitrust (sic) 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 responded with, "You can not get together and agree to stabilize and maintain prices," said Berman. "That is the bedrock principle of our anti-trust laws."
Berman says Compassion Over Killing uncovered documents that appear to link the cooperative's herd retirement to milk prices.
While CWT has reported that their use of bovine retirement program came to a close in 2010, there hasn't been any specific evidence to support this. And when questioned about it by KOMO, there was no comment by the group.
Regardless of whether the issue comes from a anti-trust standpoint (protecting consumers is still important) or an animal rights perspective (let's face it: that doesn't usually win law suits), the issue is in the spot light and Seattle is knee deep in it. We expect to see more about this issue in the news both from animal rights supports and competition law aficionados alike.
