(Note: NMPF’s Dairy Defined podcast explores today’s dairy farms and industry using high-quality data and podcast-style interviews to explain current dairy issues and dispel myths.)

ARLINGTON, Va. – The National Dairy Farmers Assuring Responsible Management (FARM) program spent last week at the World Dairy Expo in Madison, Wisconsin, talking to farmers about the initiative’s updated standards for animal care. Emily Yeiser-Stepp, FARM director, said closer relationships between farmers and veterinarians, enhanced care standards for calves and non-ambulatory animals, and workforce training that spotlights quality animal care, all keep dairy a livestock leader in treatment of animals.

“It’s critically important for the dairy community to demonstrate what we’re doing within the animal care space,” she said. “It allows, again, for that assurance for our customers and consumers to feel good about the dairy products that they’re purchasing.”

To listen to the full podcast, click here. You can also find the Dairy Defined podcast on Spotify and SoundCloud.

NOTE: Broadcast outlets may use the MP3 file. Please attribute information to NMPF.

ARLINGTON, VA – “Subsidies and barriers that handicap U.S. businesses in the global marketplace by violating international trade commitments shouldn’t be tolerated. We strongly support the World Trade Organization’s imposition of $7.5 billion in retaliatory duties on European products, including dairy foods, to prod the EU to uphold its World Trade Organization commitments and reinforce the importance of two-way trade.

“NMPF strongly endorses the U.S. Trade Representative’s new list of European dairy exports that will now face higher tariffs, including cheeses, yogurt and butter.

“The U.S. is running a $1.6 billion dairy trade deficit with Europe because of unfair EU trade practices that block our access to their market while they enjoy broad access to ours.

“Trade authorities should also address one particularly egregious example of EU trade practices: the EU’s abusing the use of geographical indications to limit competition from cheese exporters in the U.S. that use common food names. Rather than compete head-to-head with high-quality American-made foods by allowing the use of common food names to coexist alongside GIs relating to those products, Europe instead blocks sales of these everyday food products from the United States and aggressively pressures other countries to do the same.

“The retaliatory tariffs announced today are a clarion call for fair trade and an indication that trade must be a two-way trade. What better way to reduce the U.S. trade deficit with Europe than by selling them award-winning US cheeses?”

Note: Today the World Trade Organization announced the size of the retaliatory tariffs on EU goods the U.S. may levy in response to illegal EU subsidies to Airbus. These tariffs may continue until the EU brings its policies into compliance with WTO rules.

###

The National Milk Producers Federation, based in Arlington, VA, develops and carries out policies that advance dairy producers and the cooperatives they own. NMPF’s member cooperatives produce more than two-thirds of U.S. milk, making NMPF dairy’s voice on Capitol Hill and with government agencies. For more, visit www.nmpf.org.

With the registration deadline for the 2019 NMPF annual meeting looming Oct. 10, dairy producers and cooperative executives need to reserve both a hotel room and register for the meeting by the end of this week.

This year’s meeting, Nov. 4-6 at the Hyatt Regency hotel in New Orleans, will highlight the ways DMI and NMPF are collaborating to tackle two major issues facing dairy farmers today:  the importance of animal care in promoting the image of the U.S. dairy sector; and the opportunities available to U.S. dairy farmers for international market growth.

Attendees will hear from industry leaders during panel discussions on these topics, including Mike Haddad of Schreiber Foods; Simon Vander Woude of California Dairies, Inc.; Mike Durkin of Leprino Foods; and Ritch Allison of Domino’s Pizza. These perspectives will be complimented by the unique perspectives of farmer leaders from across the country. Attendees will also hear from University of California-Davis professor Frank Mitloehner, who will address how the entire value chain can work together to make dairy a sustainability success story.

The meeting will feature a Town Hall presentation from National Milk staff to provide participants with an overview of the work that the organization has provided for its members in 2019.  The general sessions will be preceded by the NMPF Board and Delegates meetings, and the Young Cooperator session, on Monday, Nov. 4.

Learn more about the meeting from the 2019 Join Annual Meeting website.  Individuals may register for the 2019 Join Annual Meeting at this link. Make hotel reservations ASAP using this link (NOTE: reserving a hotel room is a separate process from meeting registration).

Cooperatives Working Together in September assisted member cooperatives in capturing 39 contracts to sell 2.4 million pounds of American-type cheeses, 299,829 pounds of butter, 7.8 million pounds of whole milk powder, and 668,001 pounds of cream cheese. The products will be going to customers in 12 countries in Asia, the Middle East, Central and South America and are being shipped during the period from September 2019 through next February.

These contracts bring the 2019 total CWT-assisted product sales contracts to 94.4 million pounds, which includes of 42.6 million pounds of cheese, 4.5 million pounds of butter, 42 million pounds of whole milk powder, 277,782 pounds of anhydrous milkfat, and 5 million pounds of cream cheese. These transactions will move the equivalent of 848 million pounds of milk on a milkfat basis overseas.

Assisting CWT member cooperatives gain and maintain world market share through the Export Assistance program in the long-term expands the demand for U.S. dairy products and the U.S. farm milk that produces them. This, in turn, helps all U.S. dairy farmers by strengthening and maintaining the value of dairy products that directly impact their milk price.

The amounts of dairy products and related milk volumes reflect current contracts for delivery, not completed export volumes. CWT will pay export assistance to the bidders only when export and delivery of the product is verified by the submission of the required documentation.

All cooperatives and dairy farmers are encouraged to add their support to this important program. Membership forms are available at http://www.cwt.coop/membership.

The Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy is now accepting nominations for the 2020 U.S. Dairy Sustainability Awards, which showcases the efforts cooperatives are making across the country that demonstrate positive environmental, societal and economic impact.

Cooperatives or farmer-members may be nominated in any of the following categories:

• Outstanding Dairy Farm Sustainability
• Outstanding Community Impact
• Outstanding Supply Chain Collaboration
• Outstanding Dairy Processing and Manufacturing Sustainability

Entries are at no cost. To learn more about eligibility, application requirements and to nominate someone, visit USDairy.com/Awards. Nominations close Nov. 15.

More than 70 farms and business have already been recognized through the U.S. Dairy Sustainability Awards program. The 2020 winners will receive:

• An expense-paid trip to Chicago next April to the awards ceremony and annual dairy sustainability events
• National and local recognition of their passion for sustainability
• A featured case study on com to share insights and lessons learned with industry peers
• Opportunities to work with others in the dairy community to help advance sustainability

In a letter to Administrator Andrew Wheeler, NMPF asked the Environmental Protection Agency to reassess a 2012 study examining the sources of nitrates in Washington’s Yakima Valley.  This report unfairly accuses local dairy farmers of contributing the majority of nitrates in lower Yakima Valley groundwater. When this study was published, there were questions and concerns raised by some of the top scientists and agronomists in the country that were apparently ignored by the Region 10 EPA staff.  Yet EPA has used this flawed study as the basis for regulatory decisions.

The study had several flaws, including inadequate data to support the conclusions that were being made, limited site information, using data only pertaining to the soils in the Yakima valley, errors in estimating the seepage rates from manure lagoons and not accounting for all sources of nitrates. Other groups have written letters, as has Rep. Dan Newhouse, R-WA, in support of doing a new review of the study. NMPF is hoping the agency will soon conduct a more thorough review of the science.

The FARM program has updated its Antimicrobial Resistance Challenge numbers, showing dairy’s commitment to preventing the development of superbugs in livestock.

The Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) Challenge was launched by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention at the United Nations General Assembly in 2018 to “accelerate the fight against antimicrobial resistance across the globe.” By participating, governments, non-governmental organizations and private companies committed to preventing the spread of antimicrobial resistance and slowing the development of new resistance.

The National Milk Producers Federation committed to the AMR Challenge last year, joining more than 200 participants worldwide. NMPF took up the challenge through encouraging increased veterinary oversight of antibiotic use via FARM’s Veterinarian-Client-Patient-Relationship initiative. Under VCPR, a dairy farmer consults with a veterinarian on development of treatment and recordkeeping protocols that address the proper use of antibiotics. Dairy farms then are evaluated on conformance to the standards by a certified independent expert.

Since 2017, 27,650 dairy farms have been evaluated by the FARM Animal Care Program. Seventy-eight percent of evaluated farms had a valid VCPR, and the remaining 22 percent obtained a valid VCPR with the next 5.5 months.  For more about the AMR Challenge, visit at https://www.cdc.gov/drugresistance/intl-activities/amr-challenge.html.

The first FARM Stakeholder Forum held Sept. 4-5 in Minneapolis provided updates for all four FARM program areas and invited industry stakeholders to join the conversation on the FARM Program. National Dairy FARM Program team Representatives from pharmaceutical, nutrition, technology, extension and other support companies discussed opportunities for future partnership and collaboration with FARM to advance the goal of continuous improvement within the dairy industry.

For this month, The Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy and the FARM Program are holding a customer webinar series this month targeted toward food-service and retail customers.

Each session will focus on hot topics and priorities in the dairy industry important to businesses.  The webinars in the three-part series will be led by the FARM team and other industry experts who will provide the latest information and address questions about the future of animal care, how worker experiences can be enhanced on the farm, and how the U.S. dairy industry works from the farm to the retail shelf.

For more information or to learn how to register to attend these webinars, please email dairyfarm@nmpf.org.

The Environmental Protection Agency officially repealed the Waters of the U.S. (WOTUS) regulation Sept. 12^th, paving the way for that agency and the Army Corps of Engineers to finalize a new rule later this year or early next year. Having filed several comments regarding the need to repeal the 2015 WOTUS rule, NMPF agrees with this long-anticipated development, which will reduce confusion and uncertainty over the Clean Water Act that has lingered for more than four years.

The WOTUS regulation that took effect in 2015 was deeply unpopular among farm groups. Citing the many ambiguities and uncertainties of EPA’s then-proposed rule, NMPF urged EPA to rethink it in 2014, before it was adopted. An NMPF analysis at the time found that the Obama Administration proposal did not meet the requirements of various Supreme Court rulings that were the catalyst for the 2015 regulation.

Repealing the 2015 rule now makes the 1986 WOTUS rule effective for the entire United States.

A twenty-cent per hundredweight increase in the price of milk from July to August, together with a 38-cent drop in the Dairy Margin Coverage feed cost calculation over the same time boosted the DMC margin for August by 58 cents a hundredweight over July’s margin of $9.27 per cwt. to $9.85, and thus “out of the money” for generating payments under the program. The maximum margin coverage level under the program is $9.50 per cwt. for up to five million pounds of covered production history. A drop in the price of corn, assisted by lower soybean meal prices as the country heads into harvest season, generated the DMC cost reduction, the largest monthly drop since June 2018. The DMC margin will almost certainly remain above $9.50 per cwt. for the remainder of 2019.

As of Sept. 26, USDA’s DMC Decision Tool, which can be accessed online, projected the margins shown in the chart on the left.

The DMC information page on NMPF’s website offers educational resources to help farmers make better use of the program.

NMPF regulatory expert and staff counsel Clay Detlefsen spoke about the importance of maintaining the integrity of the standards of identity and the unintended consequences of horizontal standards at a meeting hosted Sept. 27 by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) soliciting input on the creation of horizontal standards across all categories of standards of identity.

So-called “horizontal” standards would allow the FDA to make sweeping changes to food standards of identity across categories. Proponents argue such standards would allow manufacturers to innovate and produce more nutritious versions of standardized foods. Detlefsen urged caution, noting the unintended consequences of across-the-board changes.

Of more than 280 standards of identity, 95 are for dairy products, Detlefsen said. If a change to one is a change to all, unforeseen results could be seen in any number of the other 280 foods, he said. For example: FDA has proposed allowing vegetable oils to be used where animal fats are currently used because of their so-called “healthier” nature, opening the door, for example, to olive oil substituted for animal fat – with an end result being an inferior-quality ice cream that has no cream in it.

“When dealing with 280 very different standards, and the intention is to improve one, such changes may not be transparent when applied to different foods, and stakeholders could be deprived of a proper opportunity to weigh in,” Detlefsen said. “Further, in many cases the real motivation for change could be to make the product cheaper.”

NMPF suggested that if any changes possibly could be limited to foods that are similar, such as grouping all dairy together or all cheeses.

The meeting, which took place on September 27^th, was held as part of the agency’s comprehensive, multi-year nutrition innovation strategy. FDA wants to modernize the standards of identity to:

1) protect consumers against economic adulteration;

2) maintain the basic nature, essential characteristics and nutritional integrity of food;

3) promote industry innovation and provide flexibility to encourage manufacturers to produce healthier foods.

The meeting included a history of the standards of identity, and three breakout sessions on innovation, nutrition, and consumer expectations where participants were free to share their opinions on the topics.

NMPF is requesting dairy farmers respond to this survey to better understand how dairy farmers interpret an antibiotic with a zero-day withdrawal period of zero-day milk discard time.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration opened a docket Aug. 9 requesting information regarding transit times to slaughter, milking frequency, and how end users interpret zero-day withdrawal period or zero-day milk discard time statements found on new animal drug labeling. This request is driven by the recognition that the animal agriculture industry has drastically changed since original assumptions were determined in 1980, and FDA is requesting information to ensure their regulations are in line with what is practiced today. The full request can be found here.

Survey responses are completely anonymous and cannot be traced back to the respondent. No personally identifiable information is captured, and your responses will be combined with those of other farmers and summarized to further protect anonymity. The answers will be used to inform NMPF’s comments to the FDA to ensure they have the most accurate information from dairy farmers.