By Yuko Iseya

Hokkaido is the most prosperous area for dairy farming in the whole country. It has a large number of dairy farmers. Therefore, milk is a special product of Hokkaido. On March in 2006, there was shocking news. Unbelievably, about 1,000 tons of milk was disposed of. Surprisingly, it cost a lot of money to dump milk, and taxes were used for it.

One thousand tons of milk equals 1 million cartons of milk. What was the cause of wasting so much milk? Was there no way to prevent the milk from being dumped?

The consumption of milk has declined 5 percent during the latest decade. Why is there a decline in consumption of milk? The reasons for this decline are changes in consumerﾕs tastes from milk to many kinds of tea, mineral water, soymilk, and so on.

On the other hand, even as consumption declined in 2005, feed yield increased because of good weather, so the amount of milk increased. However, consumption of milk declines even as the quantity increases. Basically, it is impossible to balance supply and demand.

As a result, 10,000 tons of milk had to be reduced. This bothered many dairy farmers. Usually, they make production plans two years in advance, so they can't cope with the sudden reduction in production.

Milk cows get a sickness called mammitis if they are not milked. Therefore, dairy farmers have to milk them. This means that if there is no way to utilize the milk, they still must milk the cows and then throw it away. 　

They tried to sell the surplus milk to dairy factories that process cheese and butter, but the amount of milk was too much for the processing capacity. It is impossible to process all the surplus milk.

Hokuren shop has tried to stimulate consumption of milk with a campaign. People who buy a carton of milk can get 200cc of milk for free, and they gave away cartons of milk at Sapporo station. Also, they handed out cooking books about dishes which make use of milk, and 1,500 boxes of butter for nothing to grab consumer's attention and boost sales.

Those kinds of campaigns are not carried out only by Hokuren, but also by facilities for visitors in various ways; giving milk produced in Hokkaido as a welcome drink in cafe au lait or tea with milk at teatime, and hot milk for night.

They also have many tourists from outside of Hokkaido, so they try to expand consumption by actively appealing to people about how good milk in Hokkaido is, and sell it as a local specialty.

This time 1,000 tons of milk were disposed of, but actually, it wouldn't be wasted if each of us in Hokkaido would drink only 180cc of milk. After all, it's possible to stop the useless disposal of milk if everyone drinks it, even if it is only a little. Perhaps if there is surplus milk to throw away, the government or Hokuren should pay the expense for its free distribution in an effort to expand consumption. Milk, which is one of the special products of Hokkaido, should be used more effectively.

Everyone knows that milk is good for you. We shouldn't drink milk because we like or dislike it as a luxury, and we should drink just a glass of milk everyday or find a good way to use milk for dishes.

In Bekkai, Hokkaido, through an area-wide movement to increase milk consumption, they chalked up a consumption increase of 20 percent compared with last year. Thus, a town-wide or an area-wide campaign will help as a step to solve the problem. We should think and do everything possible so as never to repeat the wasteful dumping of milk again.