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Are farmers getting a fair deal?
Last fall, dairy farmers filed a class-action lawsuit against DFA and Dean Foods, accusing the two companies of “monopolizing a level of distribution of fluid milk in the Northeast and forcing dairy farmers to join DFA or its marketing affiliate, Dairy Marketing Services, to survive.” DFA has responded that the lawsuit is “without basis.” Then in January, the Justice Department, along with state attorneys from Illinois, Wisconsin and Michigan, filed an antitrust lawsuit against Dean Foods following its purchase of competitor Foremost Farms.
DFA controls about one-third of the U.S. milk market, and is the primary milk supplier to Dean Foods. Dean Foods controls about 40 percent of the national milk supply, about 60 percent of organic milk and 90 percent of soymilk (Dean brands include The Organic Cow, Horizon Organic, Garelick Farms, Dean’s and Land O’Lakes, to name a few). Dean Foods spokeswoman Liliana Esposito insists, “Dean Foods is not a monopoly that ‘controls' any market. We buy less than 15 percent of the nation’s raw fluid milk supply from only 9,000 of the 58,000 U.S. dairy farmers.” But according to U.S. Senators Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Russ Feingold (D-WI) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Dean Foods controls about 90 percent of the market for fluid milk in Michigan, 80 to 90 percent in Tennessee, 80 percent in Massachusetts and 70 percent in New England.
As Senators Sanders, Feingold and Schumer wrote to the Justice Department last year, “Many of us in Congress believe that preservation of family-based agriculture is vital for the prosperity of rural America and our country as a whole. Many of us also believe that consumers throughout the country want the opportunity to purchase fresh, high-quality, and locally produced food…. Dairy farmers [should] be able to sell their product at a price that they deserve.”
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