Dairy Plant Drops 11 Milk Suppliers Due to Surplus

Last week, Pennsylvania-based dairy processing plant Galliker’s Dairy severed ties with 11 out of its 85 milk supplying farms. The dairy was unable to sell all of the milk produced by its suppliers in recent years, and incurred heavy financial losses as a result. Cutting a portion of its supply means the company will now produce 2 million fewer gallons of milk this year—13 percent less than the 14.5 million it currently produces. Every year in the US, dairy farmers have produced an alarming surplus of dairy that they could not sell to consumers who are increasingly choosing plant-based milk alternatives—as evidenced by the continual growth of the global cruelty-free dairy industry that is projected to reach $16 billion by 2018. In the first five months of this year alone, US dairy farmers dumped 78 million gallons of surplus milk—an all-time stockpile high up by 86 percent from last year’s purge—across fields and into farmed animal feed.