WA St Dairy Federation on Coronavirus Pt 1
I’m Bob Larson. We all hear the stories about the grocery store shelves stripped of toilet paper, flour, eggs, and other products during the coronavirus, while very few ag producers are having any trouble keeping up with demand.For example, Dan Wood, Executive Director for the Washington State Dairy Federation, says the stories about milk dumping at some dairies is somewhat misleading …
WOOD … “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.”
As for the milk dumping, Wood says …
WOOD … “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.”
Even with that, Wood says the milk dumping is misunderstood …
WOOD … “I had somebody from a food network call me and say, hey if it gets to dumping in this state could you just send it to the food banks? And, I explained to him that we cannot send the raw milk to them that way, it has to be processed, but that we are pushing for more commodities for the food banks.”
In these desperate times, Wood says it’s gotta be done …
WOOD … “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.”
Listen tomorrow for more … on dairy farms in this coronavirus world.