In yet another sign that the UK dairy industry is in serious trouble, new figures out this week have revealed a staggering drop in sales of milk and cream to the EU, by far our largest export market. Is this really just teething troubles, as Boris Johnson calls them, or is it another nail in the coffin of cow exploitation?

While the plant food industry has suffered a 75.7 per cent drop in sales of vegetable oils to the EU, the dairy industry has had it far worse with a staggering 96 per cent decrease in sales of milk and cream to the EU in February year-on-year. The figures were revealed in a report out this week from the Food and Drink Federation (FDF), which blamed the falls on ‘post-Brexit trade deal’s red tape’.

The news is likely to be another blow to the ailing UK dairy industry, already reeling from more than a year of falling demand due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the resulting lockdowns. This was also partly to blame for the dire EU sales, but the FDF also called on the Government to return to talks with the EU to resolve the main underlying issues.

Blaming bureaucratic red tape and differences in paperwork, Dominic Goudie, FDF head of international trade, said: “UK businesses continue to struggle with inconsistent and incorrect demands at EU borders, and small businesses have been hardest hit due to the collapse of groupage distribution into the EU.”

The plant food industry and indeed all food and drinks exports to the EU have experienced declines year-on-year due to Brexit, but with dairy being the UK’s largest agricultural sector and exports accounting for around 20 per cent of the raw milk processed in the UK, the effects of Brexit are all the more devastating. An almost total drop in sales to the EU of milk and cream will mean that on average, UK producers may have lost around a fifth of their revenues in February 2021 compared to the same month last year.

Boris Johnson has described such post-Brexit trade slumps on ‘teething problems’ and the dairy industry will no doubt hope that is the case. But the FDF is less optimistic, fearing that without efforts to renegotiate the Brexit deal, the drop in export sales will continue well into the future. Government officials have also blamed the problems on a ‘sulking’ EU, while the UK’s negotiator Lord David Frost, said last month that he hoped the EU would “shake off any remaining ill will towards us for leaving,” words that are unlikely to give any comfort to worried dairy farmers.

Periods of adjustment and turmoil may seem like the worst time to make significant changes, but the dairy industry has been on its knees for a long time now. Propped up by subsidies and handouts that look likely to dry up, and without which few dairy farmers would make any profit at all, now is the time for them to think seriously about switching to more sustainable plant-based agriculture or alternative land use.

Last year, we launched our ‘Milk this is your moment’ campaign in response to the UK dairy industry’s attempt to bolster dairy sales through a misguided and sorely misjudged marketing campaign, largely funded by Defra via a £500 million grant. The campaign features a booklet aimed at dairy farmers wanting to escape the sinking ship that is UK dairy and instead explore other ways in which to make a living. These include producing oats and nuts for the burgeoning plant-based milk and alternative protein sectors, or changing land use completely to instead generate solar or wind energy, or take advantage of land stewardship and rewilding schemes for carbon sequestration.

Whatever option dairy farmers take will be a move away from a harmful and unsustainable form of agriculture that exploits the innocent. No one wants to see farmers and their families struggling and destitute, but for their good and the good of the cows, whose reproductive organs are exploited and who calves are stolen from them so that we can profit from their milk, the end of the dairy industry can not come soon enough.

Andrew Gough is Media and Investigations Manager at Surge.

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