Dairy farmer dumps milk, makes video, faces backlash

by Nelson Zandbergen Courtesy of Farmers Forum

A stainless steel pipe gushes fresh milk over the milking-parlour floor as unhappy Dunnville dairy farmer Jerry Huigen loudly decries having to waste 30,000 litres after reaching his January production quota for the herd of 260.

A million people were estimated to have watched his riveting video message within a couple of days after it was posted on TikTok and spread to other social media platforms.

“At the end of the month, I have to dump all my milk. (I’m) supposed to keep it quiet,” Huigen says in the footage, staring intently into the camera as he wags his finger.

The original video has since been deleted by the family but lives on through multiple online copies that continue to be shared. The mainstream media also latched onto Huigen’s message, which went ‘viral’ in the same week that the Canadian Dairy Commission imposed a Feb. 1 dairy price hike.

Dairy farmers are told “just throw it down the drain, nobody sees it, it’s OK,” Huigen says in the video, after taking a swig from the raw milk stream that spills onto the concrete while his cows are milked in the background. “Well, it’s not OK.”

The farmer is paid about 90 cents per litre for the milk he doesn’t dump. Huigen dramatically places a bottle of the premium Fairlife brand beside the outflow of wasted milk to draw a contrast. “How do you guys dare to put this product on the market for $7 a litre, and think that’s OK?” he declares. He suggests the wasted milk should go to single mothers or hospitals instead.

No other country compels its farmers to dump milk down the drain, he adds.

Filling quota has been likened to filling a bucket to its absolute maximum. The only way to totally hit 100% of capacity is to slightly overfill and let the excess run off. By default, this creates waste unless

The Food Corner

by Paul Cormier, Salamanders of Kemptville

there’s a conscious effort to deal with the overflow. But dairy farmers contacted by Farmers Forum said the system does accommodate some overproduction, so long as the farmer practices good management. If he overproduces one month, the excess is credited toward a subsequent month when he underproduces.

Huigen has since received a lot of criticism from other dairy farmers on social media.

In short, Huigen wouldn’t be dumping milk unless he had already exhausted his allowable overquota float equivalent to 10days worth of production, wrote Cornwall-area producer and columnist Angela Dorie. A herd of 260 cows would produce 30,000 litres in about four days.

“He missed the ball by that much, but he has the right to say what he wants,” Meaford-area producer Paul Vickers observed.

“He knows the rules of the quota system, it’s quite simple,” said Cornwall-area producer Doug Robinson. “Either you dry cows up or you sell your (extra) cows. Everybody is in the same boat. That’s just poor management.”

Irma Brink of Grand Valley echoed Robinson’s advice, observing: “If you produce 30,000 litres too much, then you have a problem.”

Brink, who chose to be part of Canada’s dairy quota system when she and her husband left their native Holland in 2017, said that if Huigen doesn’t like the system, he can set up in the U.S. The downside there is that milk prices fluctuate and often dip too low to make a happy farmer, she noted.

Professor Sylvain Charlebois, director of the AgriFood Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University, estimated that between 100 and 300 million litres of milk is discarded annually in Canada as farmers meet their production quotas. It’s “dairy’s dirty secret for years” and happens “quite frequently,” he said.

“The first step is to make milk-dumping illegal,” Charlebois advised, laying the blame on the market- ing boards, such as DFO, for the current practice, not individual producers. “If you make it illegal, then you’re going to force change.”

Charlebois added that the Canadian Dairy Commission could arrange for the dehydration, storage and ultimate export of the surplus milk. The CDC already operates a national strategic butter reserve. Just extend the organization’s scope to handle the orphaned milk, in powdered form. “That’s all you need to do,” he said.

The powdered milk could be exported to overseas buyers, he assured, just as surely as Kingston’s Fehe plant turns Ontario milk into baby formula that is exported to China.

Huigen did “the right thing” by going public in the way that he did, Charlebois said. “Obviously, this farmer felt it was very important to convey this to Canadians who are dealing with a very high food inflation rate.”

He claimed that the “mismanagement” accusation being levelled at Huigen is typical treatment for those exposing shortcomings in the system. “The DFO is individualizing the issue and targeting this one guy and making him look stupid. That’s what they do,” he said.

Milk dumping doesn’t fit with supply management’s image as a more efficient, less wasteful system, nor does it accord with the federal government’s more recent “sustainability” objectives, the professor warned. “Why would you ever want to produce food for nothing?”

Ontario dairy farmers do have the option of allotting a planned amount of their monthly production into DFO’s long-standing food bank program. But that program doesn’t accommodate unplanned large donations on a moment’s notice.

In August of 2020, I gave you the recipe for Ratatouille Provençale. By the way, my family and I love the Ratatouille movie because it’s all about COOKING! This week’s recipe is another take on the famous dish from the South of France, in the form of a casserole. It’s a simple and tasty dish called Ratatouille Casserole.

Ratatouille Casserole

Ingredients

1 medium sized sweet onion, chopped

4 garlic cloves, minced

½ pound of mushrooms, sliced

1 large green pepper, seeded and chopped

1 eggplant (no more than a pound) unpeeled and chopped into ½ inch cubes

1 half litre of tomato sauce (15 ounces)

1 cup of chicken broth

½ cup of water

2 teaspoons of dry thyme leaves

1 teaspoon of black pepper

1 ½ cup of brown rice

1 tablespoons of olive oil

Preparation

- Heat the olive oil in a 12-inch fry pan over medium heat

- Cook the onion till sweated, then add the garlic, mushrooms, pepper and eggplant

- Cook long enough for most of the liquid to have evaporated

- Place your veggies in a 4-quart casserole dish

- Mix in the tomato sauce, chicken broth, rice, thyme and black pepper; add the water

- Cover and bake for about an hour at 350F or until the rice is soft

If you need to add liquid, use a bit more chicken broth or water

Note: if you wish to add protein in the form of meat, use cubed chicken. For fish, add cubed salmon. For vegetable protein, you can Tofu. Whatever protein you add, just sauté briefly in butter and thyme before adding to the mix and prior to placing in the oven.

This is another dish where the young ‘uns can be involved. Serve up with Naan bread cut in triangles and lightly warmed in the microwave (one round of Naan per person). Sour cream or Tzatziki is a welcome topping. Continued thanks for the great feedback on the column and on the recipes. Keep your emails coming to pcormier@ranaprocess.com.

Peacefully at the Monfort Hospital on Wednesday February 8, 2023. Sherryl Arcand age 66 of Kemptville. Beloved wife of Jeff Arcand. Loving Mom of Tracy (Andrew), Joey (Angela) and Jonathan (Jasmine). Cherished Grandma of Carter, Sydney, Miles, Jackson. Jacob and Janelle. Dearly loved sister of Gail (Guy Lussier), Bonnie Nelson, the late George Nelson (Marion), Margaret Loughlin (the late Gerald), and Suzanne Tousant (the late Jeff Boisvenue).Dear sister-in-law to Debbie Fetterly (Perry), Sandy Nicholls (Leigh), Karen Lara (Bill), Cheryl McEvoy, Theresa Craig (Mark), and Linda Bradley (Bill). Fondly remembered by many nieces and nephews. Private Family Funeral Prayers with burial at Holy Cross Catholic Cemetery was held.

A Celebration of Life will be held at the South Mountain Agricultural Hall 2967 Lough Road on Saturday February 18, 2023 from 1 to 4 p.m. with words of remembrance at 2 p.m. By family request donations in Memory of Sherryl may be made to the Kemptville District Hospital or the Winchester District Memorial Hospital. Arrangements entrusted to the Byers Funeral Home, South Mountain (613-989-3836) Online condolences may be made to www.byersfuneralhomeinc.com

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