Who Really Needs Cheap Milk?

You know, besides poor families.

The House is expected to clear legislation Tuesday that would tighten laws regulating the prices paid to Western dairy farmers that currently allow some large Arizona processors to flood California markets with underpriced milk.

The bill (S 2120) would close what critics of the current system describe as a loophole that lets milk processors in states covered by federal pricing rules avoid paying farmers the monthly minimum price for milk that is sold into states covered by their own regulations. The Senate passed the bill by voice vote in December.

Federal and state marketing orders were established to require dairy processors to pay established minimum prices to producers. The federal rules do not apply in states, such as California, that have their own rules. But gaps in the law allow dairy products processed in states under the federal rules and sold in states with their own rules to escape both sets of regulations. [The executive director of the Dairy Institute of California] estimated that more than 7 million pounds of unregulated milk flows from Arizona into California each month, undercutting the prices that California dairy processors can charge.

Thank you Congress for saving America from the epidemic of "underpriced" milk. You know the old saying, "expensive, regulated milk does the body good."

Via Congressional Quarterly.