Wisconsin farmers forced to dump milk due to processing plant issues

 MADISON, Wis. -- Dairy farmers in parts of Wisconsin are being forced to dump their milk thanks to issues at multiple processing plants.

In the last few weeks, wastewater issues caused Hastings Creamery in northern Minnesota to close for 30 days, leaving the 45 farms -- many in Wisconsin -- who rely on the facility to process their raw milk without anywhere else to turn.

"The problem with being idle for 30 days is there's no place to go with that, no other dairy plant has the capacity or the ability to be able to take that extra volume right now," Pam Jahnke, a farm expert with The Mid-West Farm Report, said. "So unfortunately, it looks like those producers are going to have to dump that milk.In southwest Wisconsin, a plant run by Associated Milk Producers Incorporated is experiencing labor issues, leaving its capacity diminished.

It comes at a time when the dairy industry is already bursting at the seams.

What we're hearing from a lot of processors right now is all of them are at full capacity, running just full out because we have a lot of milk out there, not just in Wisconsin, but across the United States," Jahnke said. "No matter what it is, the dairy chain of production right now just can't afford those kinds of glitches."

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Katy Schultz, a dairy farmer and the co-owner of Tri Fecta Farms in Fox Lake, said it's a tough situation for farmers."The cows don't realize when something changes in the system and so they're continuing to produce that milk two times a day, every day," Schultz said. "Nobody works this hard for it to just be thrown away. I can only imagine the feeling of literally watching your hard work and your passion for what you've created literally go down the drain."Jahnke said until the processing plants are back up and running at full capacity, farmers with extra milk will have to find other ways to process it or keep dumping it.