CONTACT: Katherine Ozer (202) 543-5675 Cell: (202) 421-4544

Washington D.C. (July 21, 2009) – Today before the House Agriculture Subcommittee on Livestock, Dairy and Poultry, Paul Rozwadowski, a Wisconsin dairy farmer and Chairman of the Dairy Subcommittee of the National Family Farm Coalition, testified on the corruption and greed plaguing the dairy industry that is responsible for the current record low milk prices. Rozwadowski’s testimony focused on the fact that imports of milk protein concentrates, which have never been approved by the FDA for use in food products, have been flooding the market and that the crash in milk prices cannot be attributed to overproduction of U.S. milk. He blamed instead the broken pricing system that relies on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange to price farmers’ milk and the corruption impacting large dairy cooperatives and dairy processors such as Dean Foods, who are earning record profits as farmers go bankrupt.

Rozwadowski said, “I thank the Chairman and Subcommittee for their sincere interest in addressing the dairy crisis and what emergency actions can be taken before we have a total economic collapse in our rural economies. While industry and some large dairy farmers believe we should just do nothing, NFFC believes a temporary emergency floor price of $18 is absolutely necessary to help farmers pay off their bills while we work on a longer term solution to replace our current corrupt dairy pricing system. We also need to have an immediate revival of the Department of Justice’s antitrust investigation into the nation’s largest dairy cooperatives so we can finally have fair and free competitive markets in dairy.”

Click here for Rozwadowski’s written testimony.