The lawsuit was filed in federal court in 2011 against food companies and dairy producer groups including Dairy Farmers of America, Land O’ Lakes, Cooperatives Working Together, Dairylea Cooperative, Agri-Mark Inc. and National Milk Producers Federation.
The suit alleged that the defendants engaged in a nationwide conspiracy to limit milk production by prematurely slaughtering hundreds of thousands of dairy cows.
“The biggest dairy producers in the country, responsible for almost 70% of the nation’s milk supply, conspired together in a classic price-fixing scheme,” Steve Berman, managing partner of the Hagens Berman law firm in San Francisco, said in a statement.
The agreement with the defendants releases [the producers] from the litigation. National Milk Producers Federation, which says it represents about 70% of Wisconsin’s dairy farmers, said it and Cooperatives Working Together admitted no wrongdoing.
The settlement was the “most sensible” way to end the litigation, the NMPF said, adding that the activity at issue — called the CWT dairy herd retirement program — has been terminated.