Got Milked?

Those cute milk-mustache ads are causing a nasty food fight. After a two-year audit, the Agriculture Dept. has declared that the dairy industry's campaign to promote milk consumption has "serious problems" and has been badly mismanaged. The audit recommends suspending the dairy group running the program because of sloppy record-keeping, overpayments to the program's administrator, and awarding of contracts to groups with ties to the campaign.

But there's an even bigger problem: During the course of the four-year-old campaign by the International Dairy Foods Assn. (IDFA), which will have spent $385 million by next June, milk sales have declined--at an accelerated pace. U.S. per capita consumption has fallen almost 4.8% since 1994, says the USDA, vs. a 3.5% decline in the four years before the campaign started. "If any government agency was run like this," says Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), "Congress would call them before it and ask what the heck they're doing."