Recently, a video of a significant amount of milk being dumped at the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewage Treatment Plant was posted on social media, causing shock.
A spokesperson for the sewage treatment plant acknowledged the waste of milk but declined to comment on the amount of milk discarded. Not only here. According to Milkweed, a dairy media outlet in Wisconsin, overproduction of milk in the state is 50 trailers a day, and the amount of milk that can be transported in one trailer reaches 6,000 to 7,000 gallons.
The dairy industry, which supplies fresh milk to Americans, is facing the limit of discarding milk. Due to the high production supply compared to the demand for milk consumption and delays in milk processing at dairy processing companies, there is not enough space to store milk, leading to a situation where milk is dumped down the drain.
Recently, Bloomberg News reported that the dairy industry, especially in the Midwest, was in a situation where they were dumping unconsumed milk from milk supply production. The large-scale disposal of milk by dairy farmers was a special case that occurred when the balance between supply and demand collapsed due to the closure of large consumers such as schools and restaurants as the economic shutdown was implemented in the early stages of the COVID-19 outbreak.
The waste of raw milk in the Midwest milk regions is due to oversupply. According to the USDA, milk production reached an all-time high in May. In Texas, the fourth-largest milk producer in the United States, 28,000 cows were added last year, resulting in a significant increase in milk production, up 15% from 2021. Consumption decreased compared to milk production.
Private milk consumption is down, and the production scale of the processors that process milk is also at a standstill. 90% of Wisconsin’s milk is processed into cheese, but processors are saturated and can no longer afford to process milk. Added to this is the shortage of manpower, further exacerbating the situation of oversupply of milk.
Milk prices are also falling. The futures price of benchmark Class III milk used to make cheese is at its lowest level since 2020.