TheDairySite Newsletter - 27 January 2012

TheDairySite Weekly Newsletter

Friday 27th January 2012

Our Sponsors Helping keep you updated for free!

ON-LINE SHOP News Company News Events Articles Diseases Treatments Employment Cattle Breeds SEARCH

Welcome to this week's newsletter

Editorial: Changes to DIRA Penalise Fonterra Co-operative

The New Zealand Ministry of Agriculture (MAF) has announced proposed changes to the Dairy Industry Restructuring Act (DIRA). Looking at raw milk regulations, MAF has proposed that Fonterra increases the volume of raw milk it makes available to independent processors.

The current regulations were introduced to prevent Fonterra refusing to supply raw milk to other processors or supplying it at monopoly prices. Fonterra currently controls 90 per cent of raw milk supply in New Zealand.

Dairy giant and co-operative, Fonterra, sees the proposed changes to Raw Milk Regulations as a step backwards.

The proposal would mean that Fonterra would have to supply competitors and new processors with an extra 200 million litres of milk a year.

Fonterra Chairman, Sir Henry van der Heyden, said the proposed changes to Raw Milk Regulations will not work and will have New Zealanders subsidising increasingly foreign-owned dairy processors that do not sell milk in New Zealand and who send their products and profits offshore.

Sir van der Heyden also said that the proposal would impose nearly NZ$200 million of additional costs over the next three years alone and work against the co-operative's efforts to reduce the price of milk in New Zealand.

In the proposals MAF also suggests that Fonterra provides greater transparency regarding how it sets its milk price.

Charlotte Johnston

This Week's Feature Articles

We have 5 new features this week:

Marginal Decline in Dairy Input Costs Expected in 2012
The recovery in the dairy sector in 2010 has been reinforced by another year of relatively high milk prices in 2011, writes Trevor Donnellan from Teagasc's Agricultural Economics and Farm Surveys Department in his dairy outlook for 2011/12.

Once A Day Milking - The Future Of Grass Based Dairies
Nathan Pryor farms in West Cornwall, in partnership with his family. Speaking at the British Grassland Society's From Grass to Profit conference, he explains why once a day milking is the future of grass based dairying.

Pasture and Grazing Management Under Drought Conditions
Drought is a fact of life in the Southeast, whether it occurs once every five years or for five consecutive years. While little can be done during drought conditions to increase forage pasture growth in the short term, careful management could minimize long-term stand loss and help maintain forage yields until the drought ends, writes Dr Rocky Lemus, Assistant Extension/Research Professor, Plant and Soil Sciences and Dr Daniel Rivera, Assistant Research/Extension Professor, South Mississippi Experiment Station.

Scientists Rally 'Round the Range
Rangelands in the western United States provide essential grazingland for hundreds of thousands of cattle and other livestock as well as a home for a vast array of native plants and animals. With this in mind Agricultural Research Service scientists across the West are collaborating to make sure the money used to sustain and repair these arid ecosystems is spent on programmes that work.

Lameness in Cattle: Debilitating Diesease or a Disease of Debiliated Cattle?
A growing concern of the dairy industry is to increase dairy cattle wellbeing in anticipation of a demand from the general public of welfare-certified dairy products. Lameness is one of the most important welfare issues of high producing dairy cows in North America.

Company News

Merck to Develop Bovine Mastitis Treatment
THE NETHERLANDS - Merck Animal Health (known as MSD Animal Health outside the US and Canada) has signed an agreement with the Department of Medical Microbiology of the University Medical Center (UMC) Utrecht and the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine of Utrecht University to embark on the development of innovative vaccination strategies against bacterial udder infections (mastitis) in dairy cattle.

Global Dairy Cattle Industry News