It's a good example of what's wrong with this system / country / world. We have dairy subsidies in place to help farmers stay in the milk-producing business, but we produce far more than we can consume. Milk exported from the US is so cheap that foreign nations can't afford to sell their own domestic milk. Why, then, risk our health with e.coli - grown hormones that create even more milk?

The answer, as with most of these things: short-term profit for the already wealthy. In this case, the chemical industry & its PR firms have used strategies straight out of 20th century munitions firms; sell your product to one farm so that it can produce even more milk, then tell the other farms that the price of milk is going down even further, so they better up their production if they want to make their mortgage payments. A farm would be foolish to get into this race, but the factory farms have never been known for long-term thinking, and the small guys are doing everything they can to tread water, so it's not suprising that some bit.

The real surprise is that most dairy producers aren't biting. It's not clear how much is due to consumer concerns, which have been widely publicized. Surely some enterprising reporter has dug into this?

For some good citations and reasoned arguments, check the Oct 02 issue of Harper's.