2 million litres of milk wasted since Granby, Que. factory strike

Two million litres of milk have been thrown away since an indefinite general strike broke out on Wednesday at an Agropur plant in Granby, Que. The labour dispute is forcing dairy farms to sacrifice production by thousands of litres a day.

"It's really the fruit of our labour that is being thrown away," said milk farmer Raphael Spani, co-owner of a farm family dairy.

Normally, a truck picks up milk produced at Spani's farm and transports it to the Agropur cheese plant on Omer-Deslauriers Street, in Granby, where it's processed before being sold. But with the strike, Spani no longer knows where to turn.

"Finding alternatives is difficult," he said, referring to other processing factories that are already operating at maximum capacity.

The Granby plant processes 800,000 litres of milk per day, which represents 10 per cent of all production in Quebec.

Yannick Grégoire, assistant director of communications for the Fédération des producteurs de lait du Québec, says that when a strike is called at an "important" factory like Granby, "we have to find other takers."

This involves approaching factories to see if they can process more milk, and looking for buyers outside Quebec. Producers can then try to sell their product to food banks and, if necessary, use what's left to feed their animals.

"It's after all these efforts, when there are no other options left, that unfortunately the milk has to be thrown away," he said.

According to Grégoire 70 million litres of milk are produced each week in Quebec.

"The fact remains that it's too much," he said, adding that the litres of unsold milk are synonymous with lost income for producers.

He's calling on unions and employers "to think outside the box" to help producers who are caught between a rock and a hard place.

"The producers find themselves having to bear the brunt of this labour dispute when, in the end, they are not sitting at the table to negotiate the working conditions of this plant," he said."

Although he says he's sorry for the strike leading to milk going to waste, the union adviser Bernard Cournoyer says workers will remain on strike as long as the employer maintains its demands.

"We don't go on strike just for fun," Cournoyer said. "If we go on strike, it's because there are important issues that directly target the families of strikers."