Comments on: Protesting dairy farmers hose down EuroParl and cops with milk

By: Martijn

Martijn — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 22:07:00 +0000

Milk prices aren’t high. They’re quite low. And most of that money is not going to the farmers.

My brother-in-law has a hundred cows, and he’d be financially better off if he sold them all and his land, and lived off the interest. Dairy farming is economically not viable. Not at these prices.

What farmers should be doing is simply charge reasonable prices and refuse to do business with anyone who doesn’t want to pay those prices. But somehow they seem to be at the mercy of big corporations who control the access to the supermarket shelves.

By: Missy Pants

Missy Pants — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 14:47:00 +0000

If I was going to loose money selling it I’d use it to protest too. I’m going to go broke either way, may as well make a point with it.

By: tré

tré — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 00:09:00 +0000

@boingboing-8b886a5c6d6c17b40bcf17f556616561:disqus He curd be.

By: austinhamman

austinhamman — Sun, 02 Dec 2012 22:56:00 +0000

or just a lack of competition.
if you have a few ubiquitous supermarkets and they only buy for a certain amount (or only by from certain middlemen who only buy for a certain amount) the farmer at the end has little they can do about it, there isn’t enough competition for the farmer to sell to instead so what do they do?

By: austinhamman

austinhamman — Sun, 02 Dec 2012 22:53:00 +0000

best way to protest not being able to make enough money on your milk: waste thousands of litres of it.

By: ia_

ia_ — Sun, 02 Dec 2012 15:25:00 +0000

That’s not really capitalism at all, it’s excessive regulation.

By: AlexG55

AlexG55 — Sun, 02 Dec 2012 12:30:00 +0000

No, fish and milk is fine, otherwise bagels and lox would be trayf…

By: Mike Meyer

Mike Meyer — Sun, 02 Dec 2012 10:19:00 +0000

Exactly. There are no doubt a tangle of regulations that prevent these producers from competing against monopolistic middlemen, no doubt well camouflaged as safety measures.

By: Pirate Jenny

Pirate Jenny — Sun, 02 Dec 2012 05:27:00 +0000

That just makes the driving behavior of the milk tankers I’ve seen on I-5 all the more terrifying.

By: Janet

Janet — Sun, 02 Dec 2012 03:04:00 +0000

People who believe this has anything to do with a system operating under the principles of capitalism, were not paying attention in economics class.

By: sburns54

sburns54 — Sun, 02 Dec 2012 01:46:00 +0000

If only there were a few more dairy farmers at the OCCUPY protest, they’d still be in Zucotti Park.

By: Stooge

Stooge — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 21:43:00 +0000

Yogurt to be kidding me.

By: Preston Sturges

Preston Sturges — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 19:54:00 +0000

You are a glutton for punishment.

By: blendergasket

blendergasket — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 18:56:00 +0000

No, no it’s not. Cum on.

By: blendergasket

blendergasket — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 18:45:00 +0000

It’s not people challenging the system as a whole or the authority and privilege of people at the top (the banking class). It’s a protest about a single policy that they don’t like so it’s not really a threat and they’re not trying to send them a lesson about what happens when you try to question their privilege like they were doing in NYC, SF and all over the world.

By: msbpodcast

msbpodcast — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 18:14:00 +0000

That's just because the NYPD cops come in from the 'burbs and are scared out of their minds the whole day. That attitude eventually evolves into: "Everybody here is The Enemy" and "They're all out to kill me." Belgian cops, I am reliably informed by a Belgian friend, use their 6 weeks of vacation to recover from that. NYPD cops are lucky to get two weeks a year.

By: msbpodcast

msbpodcast — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 18:05:00 +0000

Ahh, that’s just horse shit…

By: dioptase

dioptase — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 18:03:00 +0000

And the stream becomes non-Kosher.

By: unit_1421

unit_1421 — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 17:49:00 +0000

Anyone else notice the vastly different approach to protests by the cops there? The NYPD will KILL you for waving a bottle of water at them, but those cops just calmly hold their perimeter, despite being blasted with milk, and let the protesters get it out of their system.

By: unit_1421

unit_1421 — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 17:44:00 +0000

Fun fact! Milk is considered one of the most dangerous products to haul by tractor trailer. The tanker cannot have baffles or internal braces due to the risk of bacteria, so milk tankers are at high risk of roll over.

By: jtgii

jtgii — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 17:41:00 +0000

They should be happy that it wasn’t the horse breeders association that was on strike.

By: Sirkowski

Sirkowski — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 17:10:00 +0000

What if one of those cops is vegan? Hate crime!

By: Felton / Moderator

Felton / Moderator — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 17:04:00 +0000

I can’t believe I’m the first to say that these puns are udderly ridiculous.

By: zuludaddy

zuludaddy — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 14:51:00 +0000

Wait, no one has made an “expressing themselves” joke yet?

By: nixiebunny

nixiebunny — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 14:27:00 +0000

Apparently, it’s only cheap at the wholesale level. Retail is still full price.

So you’d better prepare to make a few thousand more wheels of cheese per year.

By: freemoore

freemoore — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 14:26:00 +0000

All the boys: “to the yard!”

By: vrplumber

vrplumber — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 14:13:00 +0000

You just milked that joke dry.

By: eldritch

eldritch — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 14:04:00 +0000

So the milk spraying? Kind of ingenious, from a political message standpoint.

But the tire fires, burning vehicles, and slingshotted molotovs that the Telegraph calls “flares”? Kinda ruins it.

(Of course, it’s hardly a European protest without those, I guess?)

By: Florian Bösch

Florian Bösch — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 13:17:00 +0000

Got milk? In da face.

By: Jonathan Roberts

Jonathan Roberts — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 13:13:00 +0000

Rather appropriately, the police fought back like cows.