From NMPF President and CEO Jim Mulhern:
“Congress needs to take immediate action to avert a nationwide rail strike that would damage dairy producers and deprive consumers of critical nutrition. Dairy is a 24/7 industry producing a highly perishable commodity. Any disruption of national transit networks not only keeps products from moving efficiently to markets; it deprives farmers and their processing cooperatives of everything from the feed they need for their animals to the supplies needed to continue production.
“A rail strike also would bring chaos to agricultural supply chains, as its ripple effects on trucking and other industries would complicate transport of goods everywhere from grocery stores to export markets, all the while adding another cold blast of inflation to consumer expenses this winter as products inevitably become scarce.
“With a strike looming in mere days, now is the time to act. We urge Congress to make prevention of this strike today’s top priority.”