By now, most of us have heard stories of dairy producers dumping milk because their product did not have somewhere to land. However, Dan Wood, Executive Director for the Washington State Dairy Federation, said the stories about milk dumping are somewhat misleading.

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“There’s plenty of milk. It’s a matter of getting it into the stores on the retail side and trying to keep the retailers from limiting purchases, but even that won’t save the day for what we’re facing.  Well, we really don’t have milk dumping in Washington state right now. I believe the processing plants are trying to reorient their processing to handle the fluid milk, but you can only push so much volume through.”

Wood said some have been critical of the dairy industry during the coronavirus pandemic. He noted that dairy producers cannot send raw milk to food banks, it must be processed. But that does not mean dairy producers aren’t trying to help those in need.

“There’s an effort to do everything we can to get dairy products to people in need. A lot of folks have lost their jobs and are going to rely on those food banks, and also to get assistance to dairy farms so they can stay in business.”

Wood said the diary industry, like many other commodities, are pushing the USDA to do more to allow unused products to find homes at food banks across the country to help those in need.

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