European Milk Board Demands Commissioner's Exit

This week, the European Milk Board released an open letter to Jean-Claude Juncker, President of the European Commission, demanding that agriculture commissioner Phil Hogan be removed from office.

In the letter, the Board labelled the commissioner "incompetent" and said that Mr Hogan had a "lack of expertise" in the field of agriculture.

The organisation also accused Mr Hogan of denying the existence of a dairy price crisis.

For more on how Europe is responding to the dairy crisis, you can read our recent article from Melanie Jenkins, discussing market conditions in the various member states and their interventions to help dairy farmers.

In this week’s market news, UK dairy co-operative First Milk has announced it is back into profit in the first six months of the 2015 financial year, after a long period of poor results.

Operating profit for the first six months of the financial year was £1.1 million compared to a loss of £7.6 million for the same period last year.

The company also announced this week that it will be selling its Glenfield Dairy business based in Fife, Scotland to Graham's the Family Dairy.

Arla announced this week that it is maintaining its on-account milk price at 23.04 pence per litre during December 2015.

Ash Amirahmadi, head of milk and member services at Arla Foods UK, said that markets are still under pressure.

“The firming of the market that we witnessed last month has turned and is weakening once more. Although milk supply in the USA and New Zealand continues to weaken, volumes in the northern part of Europe continue to increase," he said.