Government should intervene to end milk producers’ crisis: M Karunanidhi

Referring to the agitation by cooperative societies’ milk producers near Oddanchatiram in Dindigul district, as reported on Sunday, “dumping 1,000 litres of milk” on the highway to draw the State’s attention to their plight due to Aavin not procuring milk from them, the DMK Chief in a statement here said that this situation has been persisting for the last two months.

The Tamil Nadu milk producers union’s general secretary, Mohammed Ali had gone on record that Aavin’s procurement from milk producers of cooperative societies was progressively dwindling, he pointed out. In several districts ‘bulk milk coolers’ have been “asked to declare a holiday” and the milk cans at the district levels were not being picked up in time.

This led to more ‘rejections’ of milk by Aavin to the detriment of producers and mounting losses for dairy farmers in the cooperative fold, said Karunanidhi. While price of Aavin milk to consumers has been increased twice in the last four years, Karunanidhi pointed out that this has not benefited the milk producers.

On the contrary, citing various reports, he alleged that the state-level milk federation was ‘making a killing’ by purchasing milk from private dairies at a lower price of Rs 25 per litre, after co-opting their representatives as ‘joint members’ in milk cooperatives. This hurt the interests of original village-level members of primary milk producers’ cooperatives whose milk was allegedly spurned by Aavin, he pointed out.