In December, the National Dairy FARM (Farmers Assuring Responsible Management) Program launched its new website and FARM Proud Blog. Since then, both have been used to share important information and FARM Program successes. The FARM Proud Blog has also been promoted on the new FARM Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts.

This year, the FARM Program plans to share cooperatives’ and members’ stories on animal care. Recently, the FARM Proud blog featured two standout examples of these stories: one authored by upstate New York dairy farmer Jessica Ziehm on her family farm’s transition away from tail docking, and last week’s story about the recent El Nino rains and the animal care challenges associated with inclement weather, written by California farmer Richard Wagner.

The FARM Program is looking to fill the blog’s pages with stories like these that discuss the dairy community’s commitment to animal care — both the successes and the challenges. This is also an opportunity to spotlight cooperatives’ use of the program, and members of the NMPF staff are in the process of contacting some to interview about their commitment to FARM to be featured on the FARM Proud blog. 

NMPF continued its ongoing efforts to promote food safety by asking state lawmakers in February to reject bills that would liberalize the sale of raw milk products, citing the increased risk of foodborne illness outbreaks in states that permit broader sales of the unpasteurized products.

NMPF, in collaboration with the International Dairy Foods Association (IDFA), took aim at bills in the Virginia and West Virginia state legislatures that would allow raw-milk sales more broadly, loosening regulations requiring pasteurization for public health. In addition to urging a rejection of West Virginia Senate Bill 387, NMPF criticized two measures in Virginia, House Bills 62 and 619.

On March 4, West Virginia Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin signed Senate Bill 387, legalizing “herd sharing,” an arrangement in which people buy shares of the animal so they can receive milk from it.

Both NMPF and IDFA had asked Tomblin to veto the bill, writing that “while choice is an important value, it should not pre-empt consumers’ well-being.” Tomblin vetoed a similar bill last year.

From 1993 to 2006, there were 73 known foodborne illness outbreaks associated with unpasteurized dairy products, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Of these outbreaks, three-quarters occurred in states where raw milk sales are legal, suggesting that state legislators who support relaxing regulations may unintentionally be setting up their states for more foodborne illness. Two-thirds of the outbreaks involved children.  The CDC also found that unpasteurized milk was 150 times more likely to cause illness than pasteurized milk.

“No matter how carefully it is produced, raw milk is inherently dangerous,” NMPF and IDFA said in their letters to Virginia lawmakers. The organizations also reminded legislators that “no claim related to the health benefits of consuming raw milk has been substantiated in any of the medical literature.”

The groups emphasized that only 1 or 2 percent of foodborne outbreaks are attributed to dairy products, but over 70 percent of those dairy outbreaks have involved raw milk and raw milk cheeses.

More than 23,000 dairy operations representing 162.3 billion pounds of milk enrolled in MPP for the 2016 coverage year, according to recently released data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Farm Service Agency. The overwhelming majority of farms enrolled in MPP did so at the base level of $4.00/cwt. catastrophic coverage.

Given USDA’s forecast for 211.9 billion pounds of milk produced in 2016, the milk enrolled in MPP represents 77 percent of the U.S. milk supply. Additionally, based on the number of licensed dairy operations in 2015, 54 percent of licensed dairy operations are participating in MPP for 2016. These participation rates are down slightly from last year, as 80 percent of the U.S. milk supply and 55 percent of licensed dairy operations participated in MPP during 2015.

Of the participating farms, 18,000 purchased the $4.00 catastrophic coverage while just over 5,300 farms purchased a higher level of coverage.

Cooperatives Working Together members received 31 contracts in February to sell 3.95 million pounds of cheese, 2.54 million pounds of butter, and 5.59 million pounds of whole milk powder to customers in Asia, Central America, the Middle East, Oceania, and South America. The product will be shipped from February through August 2016.

Combined with the contracts member cooperatives captured in January, CWT-assisted transactions so far in 2016 total 8.23 million pounds of cheese, 5.4 million pounds of butter and 6.85 million pounds of whole milk powder going to customers in twelve countries on five continents. The sales are the equivalent of 247.519 million pounds of milk on a milkfat basis.

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

The U.S. government must make other countries live up to their commitments to open their markets once free trade agreements are negotiated, NMPF president and CEO Jim Mulhern told a Senate hearing Thursday that focused on the lessons from how past trade agreements have been implemented.

Even as Congress begins the early stages of review of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and the U.S. is still negotiating the TransAtlantic Trade and Investment Partnership with Europe, Mulhern pointed to examples of implementation challenges from previous free trade agreements. The value of the completed trade pacts, such as NAFTA, “depends greatly on the ability of the U.S. to make other countries live up to their commitments” when the agreements are enforced.

Canada is an example of this, as it continues to erect impediments – such as changing its cheese standards – to block dairy imports from the U.S. If this pattern continues, “new trade commitments with the country will be difficult to negotiate,” he continued. Mulhern said that the best window of opportunity for influencing how countries implement their free-trade obligations is the period before congressional approval of an agreement. 

“Action during this window not only ensures that Congress has a clear understanding of how the agreement is intended to work in practice, but it utilizes the strongest point of leverage the U.S. possesses: whether or not we will decide to put in place a strengthening of our trade ties with the FTA partner,” he said.

This becomes especially important as the TPP awaits congressional approval, and the TTIP negotiations continue. Mulhern said he does not believe TTIP is on the right track for a successful conclusion. One issue is that the EU is seeking to restrict the use of common food names just for European food producers, both in the U.S. and in other nations to which the EU exports food.

“We will have to work hard not only to enforce the letter of that agreement, but also to ensure that its intention to help promote robust competition is not undermined as a result of ongoing pressure from the EU,” Mulhern said.

Positive results in this area are achievable, he continued. Just the day before his testimony on March 3^rd, the dairy industry thanked the U.S. government for its extensive work aimed at securing clarifications regarding the right to use several generic cheese names in exports to Honduras.

The effort to establish federal standards for the labeling of genetically modified (GMO) foods made progress on March 1 when the Senate Agriculture Committee approved a bill creating a uniform national food labeling standard.  

The bill, authored by committee chairman Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS), bill would prohibit states from establishing or continuing separate labeling requirements that contradict labeling guidelines that would be established by USDA.  

The Senate measure, which is expected to be voted on this spring by the full Senate, comes less than four months before a Vermont law goes into effect on July 1 that requires the labeling of foods containing GMOs.

Following the bill’s introduction on Feb. 19, more than 600 organizations, including the National Milk Producers Federation and all of its 31 cooperative members, signed a letter [LINK] of support for the bill.

Roberts’ legislation “will give consumers information in a consistent and factual way,” said NMPF President and CEO Mulhern. “Importantly, it also reaffirms the authority of federal regulators over food safety and labeling, and prevents the creeping development of dozens of different state food labeling laws.”

Multiple studies have shown that the associated costs with Vermont’s GMO-labeling law, and a subsequent patchwork of similar state laws, will cost American families hundreds of dollars more in groceries each year, with low-income Americans being hit the hardest.

Food labeling, Mulhern continued, “is an area where we need a clear federal standard, not a piecemeal approach across the 50 states. We’ve learned from experience in the dairy sector that we need a strong federal policy governing labeling claims. Otherwise, we’ll end up with an unworkable series of competing and confusing state policies.”

WASHINGTON, DC – Even after free trade agreements are negotiated by the U.S. government, the value of the pacts depends greatly on the ability of the United States to make other countries live up to their commitments when the agreements are enforced, according to the National Milk Producers Federation, whose president testified today at a Senate hearing on the lessons from how past trade agreements have been implemented.

Jim Mulhern, president and CEO of NMPF, told members of the Senate Finance committee Thursday that trade has become critically important to America’s dairy sector, thanks to the Uruguay Round and numerous new U.S. free trade agreements since 1994.  Even as dairy exports have grown, assisted in sizable part by the arduous, careful negotiations of the treaties, in some cases we have “to work almost as hard to ensure that the market access terms of the agreements are not subsequently undermined,” Mulhern said.

Mulhern cited as an example of this dynamic the ongoing challenge to maintain access to the Canadian dairy market through the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Uruguay Round. Canada continues to erect impediments to block dairy imports from the U.S., he said. One of its latest targets “is U.S. exports of ultra-filtered milk. Canada has been considering expanding its restrictions on the use of certain dairy inputs in cheese-making to hinder imports. If Canada is allowed to continue with this pattern of eroding existing U.S. dairy access, it is difficult to see how new trade commitments with them will benefit our dairy industry,” Mulhern said.

Similar post-FTA issues arose with South Korea, but prompt and proactive U.S. government actions were successful in “ensuring that Korean officials worked with our government to resolve most of them,” he said.

Mulhern said that the best window of opportunity for influencing how countries will implement their FTA obligations “is during the period prior to congressional approval of an agreement.  Action during this window not only ensures that Congress has a clear understanding of how the agreement is intended to work in practice, but it utilizes the strongest point of leverage the U.S. possesses: whether or not we will decide to put in place a strengthening of our trade ties with the FTA partner.”

“This becomes especially important now that the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations have concluded, and consideration in Congress will at some point begin. It is also important given that our attention is now turning to intensifying the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership negotiations with the European Union.” He noted that a concrete approach to addressing the serious regulatory and technical barriers to trade with Europe has yet to develop in the TTIP talks.

“At this stage, given our past experiences, we do not believe TTIP is currently on the right track” for a successful and truly market-opening conclusion, Mulhern said. In addition to the dairy regulatory challenges, another very troubling issue in those negotiations is the EU’s geographical indications strategy, where the EU is seeking to restrict the use of common food names just for European food producers, both in the U.S. and in other nations to which the EU exports food.

“It is essential that we protect our trade rights from the onslaught of EU efforts to bully our trading partners into blocking imports of products from countries that allow the use of product names the EU wishes to reserve for itself through overly broad GI restrictions. This market eroding pattern began in Korea and soon spread to our Latin American FTA partners before impacting others around the world as well,” he said.

The geographical indications text in the pending TransPacific Partnership “was conceived as a direct response to trade restrictions that were threatening to crop up in our FTA markets,” Mulhern said.  “But our experience tells us that we will have to work hard not only to enforce the letter of that agreement, but also to ensure that its intention to help promote robust competition is not undermined as a result of ongoing pressure from the EU.  With the right focus and strategic efforts, positive results in this area are achievable, as this week’s good news about a breakthrough on GI issues with Honduras helps to demonstrate.”

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The National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF), based in Arlington, VA, develops and carries out policies that advance the well-being of dairy producers and the cooperatives they own. The members of NMPF’s cooperatives produce the majority of the U.S. milk supply, making NMPF the voice of dairy producers on Capitol Hill and with government agencies. For more on NMPF’s activities, visit our website at www.nmpf.org.

ARLINGTON, VA — The dairy industry today thanked the U.S. government for its extensive work aimed at securing clarifications regarding the right to use several generic cheese names in exports to Honduras while also establishing a better model for how Central American countries can more reliably provide such information in the future.

Honduras is an important trading partner in a growing region for U.S. dairy exports. It is a member of the U.S.-Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). U.S. dairy exports to CAFTA partners totaled $109 million last year, with Honduras ranking second in the FTA region.

The National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF) and the U.S. Dairy Export Council (USDEC) said they appreciated the Administration’s diligent work with Honduras, which this week clarified the use of threatened cheese names including parmesan, provolone and brie. Although the results did not include assurance on the continued use of certain other common names currently protected in Honduras, it does provide important assurances on many common name products.

The threat stemmed from a free trade agreement between Honduras and the European Union, in which the EU secured provisions that threatened to restrict the use of numerous commonly used food names as a way to gain a trade advantage. After numerous discussions between the United States and Honduras, the country agreed, among other things, to clearly spell out on its official website the scope of protection of the names and to create a searchable database to identify geographical indications, the official designations that protect the unique nature of specialized foods. The database will also identify which elements of those terms are deemed to be generic. In addition, Honduras committed to other steps such as providing similar clarifications for future GI applications.

“The dairy industry has worked closely with the Administration for several years to mitigate potential damage to our CAFTA market access opportunities arising from the Central America – EU FTA,” said NMPF President and CEO Jim Mulhern. “USTR’s work with Honduras was particularly important, since a previous lack of easily accessible information in Honduras hurt our own efforts to determine our ability to keep using common cheese names in exports to that country.”

Tom Suber, president of USDEC, also praised this latest accomplishment, while stressing that this was one victory in a continuing battle with Europe over geographical indications.

“Essentially, through geographical indications provisions in its FTAs, Europe wants to monopolize the use of food names that have long been in the public domain,” Suber said. “We encourage USTR keep working in additional markets – both in Central America and around the globe – to preserve our ability to use these common cheese names, particularly in countries with which we have our own free trade agreements.”

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The U.S. Dairy Export Council (USDEC) is a non-profit, independent membership organization that represents the global trade interests of U.S. dairy producers, proprietary processors and cooperatives, ingredient suppliers and export traders. Its mission is to enhance U.S. global competitiveness and assist the U.S. industry to increase its global dairy ingredient sales and exports of U.S. dairy products. USDEC accomplishes this through programs in market development that build global demand for U.S. dairy products, resolve market access barriers and advance industry trade policy goals. USDEC is supported by staff across the United States and overseas in Mexico, South America, Asia, Middle East and Europe.

The National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF), based in Arlington, Va., develops and carries out policies that advance the well-being of U.S. dairy producers and the cooperatives they collectively own. The members of NMPF’s 30 cooperatives produce the majority of the U.S, milk supply, making NMPF the voice of nearly 32,000 dairy producers on Capitol Hill and with government agencies. For more on NMPF’s activities, visit www.nmpf.org.

The U.S. Dairy Export Council prohibits discrimination on the basis of age, disability, national origin, race, color, religion, creed, gender, sexual orientation, political beliefs, marital status, military status, and arrest or conviction record.

ARLINGTON, VA – The National Milk Producers Federation today urged the full Senate to act quickly on legislation that would establish national regulations to bring consistency and transparency to the labeling of ingredients and processes used in the food supply.

The Senate Agriculture Committee today approved, by a 14-6 vote, a bill introduced last week by its Chairman, Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS), that would create a common-sense, national food labeling standard offering consumers information about products that contain ingredients such as Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs).   The legislation would preempt state laws that create labeling mandates for foods with ingredients that have been genetically modified.

Food labeling “is an area where we need a clear federal standard, not a piecemeal approach across the 50 states,” said Jim Mulhern, president and CEO of NMPF. “We’ve learned from experience in the dairy sector that we need a strong federal policy governing labeling claims. Otherwise, we’ll end up with an unworkable series of competing and confusing state policies.”

NMPF urged the Senate to expedite passage of Roberts’s measure, in order to prevent confusing marketing environment in the food industry this summer, when Vermont’s new law, requiring labeling of foods containing GMOs, goes into effect on July 1^st.  The Senate’s approach “will provide information that shoppers want, without requiring that stigmatizing label claims be mandated at the state or federal level,” Mulhern said. “Any requirement, even at the state level, to use labels to call out GMO ingredients is a de facto scarlet letter being forced on many foods, without warrant.  Mandatory GMO labels play into the fear-based marketing we see too frequently in the food industry.”

NMPF and its 31 cooperative members co-signed a letter last Tuesday with more than 600 other farm and food groups urging action on Sen. Roberts’ bill by the Senate.  The House of Representatives already passed a version of a national food labeling bill last July.

Multiple studies have shown that the associated costs with Vermont’s GMO-labeling law, and a subsequent patchwork of similar state laws, will cost American families hundreds of dollars more in groceries each year – with low-income Americans being hit the hardest.

The Roberts bill “will gives consumers the information they want in a consistent and factual way,” said Mulhern. “It also reaffirms the authority of federal regulators over food safety and labeling, and prevents the creeping development of dozens of different state food labeling laws.”

Genetically modified food ingredients have been proven safe by nearly 2,000 studies from the leading scientific bodies worldwide. Included are the World Health Organization and the American Medical Association. Up to 80 percent of the food available in the United States contains genetically modified ingredients.

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The National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF), based in Arlington, VA, develops and carries out policies that advance the well-being of dairy producers and the cooperatives they own. The members of NMPF’s cooperatives produce the majority of the U.S. milk supply, making NMPF the voice of dairy producers on Capitol Hill and with government agencies. For more on NMPF’s activities, visit our website at www.nmpf.org.

U.S. milk production continues to grow at an annual rate of less than 1 percent. Despite this, milk prices are weakening going into the first half of 2016. Weakness in world markets is transmitting low prices into the domestic nonfat dry milk and dry whey markets, while exports of butter and cheese remain well below levels of last year. The bimonthly MPP margin for November-December was $9.56, but most forecasts project that it will fall to between $7 and $8 during the next few months.

Find the Dairy Market Report on our website.

On September 29, 2015 USDA received a hearing request from the Organic Trade Association seeking a hearing to amend all Federal Milk Marketing Orders (FMMO) to include alternative producer-settlement fund payments for USDA certified organic milk. OTA’s proposal, if adopted, would certainly eliminate producer settlement fund payment obligations paid by organic handlers into the FMMO revenue sharing pools. As a result, the regulated minimum milk value provided by FMMOs would be reduced by tens of millions of dollars each year. In addition, this proposal would set a bad precedent as it would erode participation and undermine the stability of the time honored FMMO system.

NMPF filed two letters to USDA in oppostion to this hearing request. These letters are linked below:

• NMPF Letter to USDA, October 22, 2015
• NMPF Letter to USDA, December 17, 2015