Of the many ideas suggested to get farmers out of this mess one particularly interesting and radical idea has caught Ian’s eye. It doesn’t involve tipping milk away, and NO direct action by farmers is required at all. It is beautifully simple, and will embarrass non-paying retailers like nothing else. Let’s, simply, kill the cows. Not all of them, obviously! But enough to wake-up the retailers to make a difference. Let’s do it quickly. Now. After all the cows are more valuable as burgers than for milk.
Back in January 2003 the USA started a programme called the CWT (Co-operatives Working Together) Herd Retirement Programme. This took out hundreds of entire herds, which were slaughtered, compensated for and subject to conditions attached to the holding’s non-milk production it cut. It achieved the maximum positive impact on all producers – a cut in volume and an increase in milk price.
The key is for farmers to agree to cull some of their herd on 1st August. But to work we mustn’t suddenly back off when retailers bow to pressure, if indeed they do.
There is a lot of detail to the US scheme, but why couldn’t a variation of the CWT programme, say a voluntary cull, work here? The bottom line is the US scheme saw more than 500,000 cows slaughtered. It was described as a “booming success” claiming it delivered a $11.7 billion industry profit.
By the way, if an average cow was to be completely processed into burgers we calculate that it would yield around 1850 burgers which, using the current ASDA Butchers Selection Quarter Pounder price, would mean that the cow has a burger value of £1032. Having said that the reality is only around half of the animal would go into burgers with the rest going into higher value products. What is its value for milk? Negative if you make a loss from it.
How could a cull scheme work in Britain?
The cows being culled would not be cull cows but young or older milking ones which, currently, would be worth more to dairy farmers dead than alive. Yes it’s a waste of good cows, but you can’t afford to keep them right now!
The PR message would be horrifying for the non-paying retailers. “Retailer X pays a good price for milk so the cows can live. Retailer Y pays a bad price and the cows have to die. Farmers can’t afford to keep them.” There can be no negative PR implications for you farmers because you aren’t a charity and if you can’t afford to keep them you can’t keep them.
It has been suggested that the campaign be kick-started with a photo shoot of haltered cows (including one or two nice pretty Jerseys) in front of every retailer’s HQ and key premises/ stores with a farmer holding a bolt gun, with milk on one side of the cow and a pile of burgers on the other. Every major retailer, middle ground retailer, chain of coffee or corner shops etc should be visited for this photo shoot before the cow goes to slaughter. That should give their PR departments plenty to deal with.
In the first week the first targets would be ASDA/Walmart, Morrisons, Tesco, Sainsburys (yes, those too), plus Lidl, Aldi, Iceland, Costa and CostCo, as well as the Government and all of its departments whose milk procurement policy is right in the thick of it. Oh, and if the OFT thinks about poking its nose over the parapet then we’ll add them to the list too.
The only exclusions for Ian would be M&S and Waitrose. The rest of the retailers are in, and yes I have included Tesco and Sainsburys. Ian thinks the idea would have a huge impact and the first pictures will be taken at the start of the Olympics and pictures would continue from then on. Think about the press coverage with countryside themes at the opening of the Olympics, twinned with thousands of cows going to slaughter because greedy British retailers are screwing farmers. This is genuinely a nightmare PR scenario for the retailers.
