Friday, October 9, 2009

Milk Protest

Have you heard about the outrageous milk protests from the European dairy farmers here in Brussels? We get the fury in this city since Brussels is the head of the European Union. When I say outrageous, I mean OUTRAGEOUS!Swimming pools and fields of farmland intentionally flooded with thousands upon thousands of gallons of milk...
And this "shot" at Monday's demonstration in downtown Brussels....bet the cop wasn't expecting that when he got out of bed that morning!
I don't totally understand - the farmers are protesting the falling prices of dairy in Europe (and I am assuming a decreased political subsidy). In which case wouldn't you think wasting milk would be the opposite of what you would want? I guess it is at least drawing attention. All these photos are courtesy of the Associated Press.
This rambunctious milk protest has been going on all summer long! It was months ago that Dallas and I were trapped on the highway behind the dairy tractors on the highway. The tractors found a new home this week though blocking the booming Schuman Square in Brussels.
We were out of town and missed the whole thing - but this is for sure one traffic jam I DID NOT want to be stuck in!
Here's hoping there will be dairy peace sooner than later!
Here is some additional information about the milk protests:
Farm protests over milk prices ahead of EU meeting

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Good photos of the ordeal. And what an awfully sticky situation--the EU, at this point, is pretty much in trouble if they do and in trouble if they don't. There are fair trade law pressures now, but that doesn't alleviate the situation for European farmers who can't even cover their production costs.
There is an interesting video on all of this at newsy.com. It's worth watching/commenting on if you have a few minutes:

http://www.newsy.com/videos/crying_over_spilled_milk