Although American demand for dairy has risen steadily for almost 40 years, some farmers tried to limit the supply of milk by killing off their own cows.
No, you read that correctly. This mysterious state of affairs was revealed in a nationwide class-action lawsuit against dairy cooperatives, groups of farmers who pool their supplies but, as a whole, serve as middlemen between the farmers and dairy processors. In this case, lawyers from one of the premier U.S. plaintiffs’ firms alleged on behalf of American consumers that the cooperatives paid farmers to prematurely turn hundreds of thousands of cows into burgers in a sprawling scheme to prop up dairy prices.
