Towards an IUF Global Dairy Department

 

The IUF Global Dairy Conference ended last Friday, March 12 after holding sessions in Buenos Aires and Sunchales, with more than 120 participants from 22 countries.

 

On the second and last day of the Conference, delegates from several European countries, including Germany, Denmark, Spain, France and Sweden, and from South Africa presented a brief overview of the situation of the dairy sector in their respective countries, as well as of their trade unions.

 

These presentations revealed numerous points in common and some differences with the previous day's presentations by Latin American delegates. A recurring theme was the constant difficulties that many trade unions face with a number of companies, in particular, the transnational corporation Nestlé.

 

James Ritchie, general secretary of the New Zealand Dairy Workers Union (NZDWU), then outlined the situation of dairy farmers and the dairy industry in his country, and describe major difficulties faced by the labor movement as a result of a new wave of neoliberal measures implemented by the current government. He highlighted, however, that, with its membership of seven thousand workers, NZDWU still enjoys a solid position.

 

"Dairy production is crucial for the country, as milk and dairy goods are its main exports," he noted, explaining one of the reasons why his union has had relatively few problems. In addition, Ritchie underlined the importance of coordinating actions with other trade unions in the dairy sector, highlighting NZDWU's excellent relationship with the Argentine Association of Dairy Industry Workers (ATILRA).

 

The conference continued with a presentation entitled “Analysis of the Global Dairy Sector. A View from MERCOSUR," in which Enildo Iglesias, of the IUF’s Latin American Regional Office, gave a summary of his report "The Dairy Industry in the Southern Cone from a Trade Union Perspective," one of the background papers used in the conference.

 

Iglesias noted that it was still a preliminary report, as the idea was for it to be modified and expanded in the conference with contributions from participants. In his presentation, besides providing valuable figures and quantitative data from the sub-region, he noted that the leading problems faced by MERCOSUR countries are the increasing concentration and foreign ownership of land, which is an essential resource for milk production.

 

Iglesias also stressed the need to examine the activity's high consumption of water, in view of the current global water crisis that is growing increasingly worse.

 

He also pointed to growing consumer concern about animal welfare and their rejection of certain production practices and ways in which animals are raised. He said that several countries of the region are using a bovine hormone sold by Monsanto to increase cow productivity and warned that this poses great risks for animal and human health.

Lastly, he described the situation of the labor movement in dairy production and industry, and presented a number of proposals for future work.

 

Iglesias was followed by National Dairy Undersecretary Arturo Jorge Videla who stressed that the government has a strong interest in the sector and is heavily supporting it. In this sense, he said that the government has prepared a draft Dairy Program that sets out three national goals and defines responsibilities, rights and obligations for the sector's various stakeholders, establishing clear political criteria resulting from discussions, exchanges and agreements.

 

The draft Dairy Program itself was presented by Roberto Socin, regional director of Strategic Sectorial Planning, who is also a dairy producer.

 

The conference closed with words by IUF secretary general Ron Oswald, who congratulated the organizers, in particular ATILRA, saying that this event was the realization of a long-held aspiration.

 

The Spanish delegation took the opportunity to call for the creation of a Global Dairy Department within the IUF, a proposal that was seconded by several other delegations. Oswald expressed his support for the initiative and announced that he would put it to the consideration of the IUF’s International Executive Committee. He also invited ATILRA general secretary Héctor Ponce to present the proposal himself at an upcoming meeting of the committee, and the Argentine unionist accepted the invitation.

 

Ron Oswald noted that creating such a department will only be possible if the affiliate organizations commit to that responsibility, and said he was fully confident that they would.

 

On the last two days of the conference, many of the foreign delegations traveled to the city of Sunchales, in the province of Santa Fe, where they visited youth training centers and several facilities, including the National Agricultural Research Institute (INTA), a Sancor cooperative plant, and, naturally, the headquarters of ATILRA, where they were impressed by the first-rate infrastructure at the trade union's clinic, Clínica 10 de Septiembre, which provides integral health services for the region's workers.