Report finds 6.8 billion litres of milk discarded since 2012 

Glacier FarmMedia—Canadian milk producers are wasting an extraordinary amount of milk and losing billions of dollars when they dump surplus production, a new study has found.

The study published in Ecological Economics said 6.8 billion litres has been discarded since 2012. That could have supplied the annual dairy intake for 4.2 million Canadians, it found.

Sylvain Charlebois, one of three co-authors, said his colleagues from Europe and the United States initiated the study after a Canadian dairy farmer last year filmed himself dumping thousands of litres.

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They developed a methodology to quantify the amount nationally.

“It was actually quite shocking,” Charlebois said after presenting the Robertson Lecture at the Johnson Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy in Regina.

“My expectation was maybe 100 million litres a year. but it was just so much higher.”

The study found the waste over the last 12 years could be as much as 10 billion litres worth $14.9 billion. That represents seven per cent of milk production. The co-authors said it is a consequence of inefficiencies within the supply management system.

Charlebois, from Dalhousie University’s Agri-Food Analytics Lab, Thomas Elliot from Aalborg University and Benjamin Goldstein from the University of Michigan used a material flow analysis to examine the environmental, economic and nutritional costs of the dumped milk.

At the upper estimate of 10 billion litres, they said that contributed to about 8.4 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions, which compared to the yearly emissions of 350,000 vehicles.

They said milk dumping should be illegal in Canada and called for more transparency on how much surplus milk is produced and wasted to help the industry identify how to reduce the problem.

Charlebois said it’s imperative the Canadian Dairy Commission manage surpluses as it does with butter.

“We have a strategic reserve for butter so we should do the same with powdered milk and look at different opportunities, perhaps supply to food banks,” he said.

“Dairy farmers are already quite generous toward food banks. I’m just talking about the surpluses.”

The study said revised dairy quotas to better align with market demand and consumer preferences could prevent overproduction and said overproduction should be penalized.

“With supply management I do believe we shouldn’t waste one litre of milk, unlike the U.S.,” said Charlebois.

Jacques Lefebvre, chief executive officer of Dairy Farmers of Canada, said the nature of the study must be taken into account.

“The authors of the study acknowledge that much of their conclusions are drawn from ‘estimates’ rather than a robust data set,” he said.

“These data assumptions and calculations would need to be validated independently.”

He also said milk disposal is not a unique issue to Canada.

“Although supply management is aligned to the needs of the domestic market, when there is a surplus of milk, often it is linked to supply chain issues,” Lefebvre said.

“Milk is disposed only as a last resort after exploring all other alternatives. This is done in accordance with regulations and the costs are borne by the dairy farmers.”

Charlebois has long criticized the supply managed dairy industry.

During his presentation in Regina he said the system “is a wonderful thing but it’s being abused.”

He said Canada must be more consistent about its policies and used the construction of a baby formula plant in Kingston, Ont., as an example.

Canada Royal Milk is owned by the Chinese and was built for $284 million. Ottawa provided $30 million toward construction and the Ontario government provided $24 million.

“This plant now processes Canadian milk for Canadians and actually makes baby formula. My question to you, or to us, why isn’t that plant Canadian?” he asked the audience. “We know why.”

He said supply management doesn’t allow the sector to innovate and vertically integrate, and the Canadian “obsession for marketing boards has allowed the Chinese to build a plant in our own back yard.”

Fairlight, owned by CocaCola, has also built a plant in Peterborough, Ont. to produce lactose-free milk.

“That plant in Kingston is about to export products out of Canada with Canadian milk and we just gave $5 billion to Canadian dairy farmers because we signed three trade deals,” Charlebois said.

“That is not being consistent.”

He also said China received taxpayer funding for its plant while boycotting canola and pork because of the Huawei incident five years.

“That needs to be fixed,” he said.

Charlebois also said Bill C-282 to protect supply management in future trade deals should not pass.