DEAR EDITOR

There’s growing concern about the opposition by Irish dairy co-ops and their representative body ICOS to proposed EU reforms under Article 148, which aims to strengthen farmers’ position in the food supply chain through fair and transparent contracts.

But here’s the contradiction. Co-ops are already making farmers sign contracts, often under threat of delayed payments, penalties, or even refusal to collect milk.

These contracts are usually non-negotiable, one-sided, and lack pricing clarity. Farmers often don’t know what they’ll be paid until after they’ve delivered their milk, despite being the supposed owners of these co-ops.

If co-ops are truly farmer-owned and act in farmers’ interests, then why are they resisting rules that would ensure fairness, transparency, and predictability, especially in contracts they already enforce and penalise farmers over?

The EU’s proposal doesn’t ban co-ops or tear up contracts – it simply introduces basic protections for the primary producer.

If those protections threaten the current system, it raises a deeper question – whose interests are co-ops really serving today, farmers’ or their own?