Tesco yet to deliver on milk
A month after announcing a vital increase of 4p per litre to dairy farmers, Tesco has yet to deliver any financial help to Britain's battered milk industry, crisis talks in Shropshire heard.
When 400 people packed the West Mid Showground for the WI's Great Milk Debate last night, Britain's biggest supermarket came under fire for hijacking the crisis and turning it into a public relations exercise.
Felix Gummer, for Tesco, was jeered when he admitted he did not know when the 22p per litre would come into effect.
"Hopefully it will happen in the next few weeks," he said.
"Obviously things like this take time but the structure is in place and we as a company are doing something positive about the price dairy farmers are being paid for their milk."
But Paul Wynn, a dairy farmer from Whitchurch, said the supermarkets were to blame for the crisis.
"A decade ago the supermarkets were taking 3p per litre and now they are taking 15p," he said. "They are to blame and they are damn near too late to save this industry."
Shrewsbury MP Daniel Kawczynski, who set up the all-party parliamentary group for dairy farmers, said: "There is so much interest and so much determination from supermarkets to show they are paying a fair price to banana growers in the Caribbean but what about our dairy farmers?"
There was more bad news for county milk producers when it was revealed that none of the 14 regional milk centres being set up to deliver Tesco's new "local milk" campaign would be in Shropshire.
