According to Forbes, Cooperatives Working Together, the dairy industry’s umbrella group, is giving 52 million dollars in rebates to consumers after being sued for killing cows to fix prices.
Last September, trade groups and companies representing most of the U.S. dairy industry agreed to shell out $52 million to settle a class action antitrust lawsuit against them. The suit was filed after evidence uncovered by Compassion Over Killing showed that these groups—including the National Milk Producers Federation, Dairy Farmers of America, and Land O’Lakes—conspired for years to jack up milk prices, bringing in $9.5 billion in added profit.
The dairy industry increased profits by prematurely killing half a million young cows and calves. This horrific plan, disgracefully dubbed a “herd retirement program, reduced the supply of milk, causing prices to spike in what the plaintiffs’ lawyer called a “classic price-fixing scheme.
Two weeks ago, the CWT started dispensing rebates. According to Forbes, the industry group decided to settle rather than spend money in court. Jim Mulhern, president and chief executive officer of the National Milk Producers Federation, explains:
Our CWT leadership team, with support from the CWT membership, has worked diligently to put this legacy issue behind us. Settlement of this litigation is the most sensible and responsible course of action to maintain the current CWT Export Assistance program and allow us to focus on the future.
Factory farming spokespeople hypocritically justify their cruel and unsustainable practices as a way to keep food prices down, yet they’ve gone to absurd lengths to keep prices artificially high. The reality is that these industries care as little about their consumers as they do the animals they abuse. The only thing they do care about? Profit.
Don’t believe us? Just take a look at MFA’s latest undercover investigation from a dairy farm in Colorado: