While the attention of the nation is focused on the health care debate, a quiet death blow is being dealt to Maine’s dairy farming tradition, as well as dairy farms large and small across the nation. With milk prices at $9-10/hundred weight for most of this year, no producer can survive.

Our state has funds allocated to support this dismal price for only a couple more months … then what? As a large animal veterinarian, I have clients who desperately want to sell out and stop racking up more debt every month, but neither their milk nor their cows are worth anything.

Most people won’t know or care until the shelves at local grocery stores contain only cheap, frighteningly unhealthy, imported dairy derivatives and substitutes, nor do most people realize that the price of a gallon of milk in the store has no relation to what farmers are actually getting paid for their product. Locally, milk processors and retailers make the profit — make no mistake about it. The Federal Milk Order sets the price farmers are paid. Globally, beneath layers of the usual greed and corrupt politics lies a system that will shut down our domestic dairy industry and wipe away the last of our family farms. Take a good look around, it’s almost over.

If you like ice cream, yogurt, cheese on your pizza or a glass of fresh milk with your apple pie, maybe you should go out and buy a cow before they become extinct.

Rebecca Myers Law, Turner