Price hikes are especially harmful to poor consumers, who depend on milk as an affordable, healthy staple in their diet, and school districts that must spend millions of dollars every year to provide milk to their students. What s worse is that smaller farms, on whose behalf many compact advocates claim to be acting, receive little or no benefit from this pricing scheme. Dairy compacts clearly do little or nothing to inhibit the continued loss of small family farms. The idea that regional trading schemes are harmful to interstate commerce is not new. One of the reasons our Founding Fathers abandoned the Articles of Confederation in favor of the U.S. Constitution was over the issue of states charging tariffs on goods from other states.
Regional compacts run counter to the spirit and intent of the Constitution.
In accordance with the 1996 Farm Bill, this price-fixing milk cartel is due to come to end in October. For the sake of consumers in New England and farmers across the country, Congress should keep the promise it made in the Farm Bill and let this protectionist compact expire.