Dairy farmers, seeking to highlight the losses they claim to be suffering because of the alleged open sale of adulterated milk and milk products in the market, symbolically spilled milk outside the office of the Deputy Commissioner here on Monday.
After staging a demonstration for more than an hour, the protesting farmers handed over a memorandum, addressed to Deputy Commissioner Dalvinderjit Singh, to Tehsildar Hriday Pal.
Amritsar Dhodhi Union president Ranjit Singh said, after calculating expenses under all heads, the production cost of milk worked out to nearly Rs 80 per litre, and dairy farmers could sustain themselves only if they sold milk above that rate.
However, he alleged that those using unauthentic and dubious means of production were openly selling milk in the market at nearly Rs 60 per litre.
“Customers compare only prices, and rarely pay attention to quality. They purchase cheaply available milk, which hurts genuine dairy farmers economically as such sellers capture the market while the space for pure and nutritious milk continues to shrink,” he said.
He added that genuine dairy farmers were often compelled to sell their unsold milk at lower prices in order to avoid further losses.
“All these factors together are making dairy farming unviable, yet the government never bothers to assess the situation,” he alleged.
Singh said adulterated cheese and ‘khoya’ were being sold openly at nearly Rs 300 per kg, whereas the production cost of these for “genuine” dairy farmers stood at around Rs 500 per kg.
In such a market scenario, he added, “genuine” dairy farmers were suffering economically, and their children were unwilling to continue in a profession where one incurred losses despite extreme hard work.
Highlighting the labour-intensive nature of the profession, he said a dairy farmer woke up at 3 am to ensure that milk reached the city by 7 am.
He alleged that adulterated milk and milk products were readily available at dairies located on Ram Tirath Road, Chabal Road, Hakima Wala Gate, Lohgarh Gate and Fatehgarh Churian Road.
He said, earlier, the Health Department used to publicly disclose the names of dairy operators whose products failed quality tests.
“Now, that is no longer the case,” he said, appealing to the government to reveal the names of offenders so that people could “understand the real situation”.
