Add-On Charges for Milk Ads
As president-elect of the California School Food Service Assn., I read with great interest “Got Enough Money to Buy Milk?” (Feb. 10). Your article highlighting the various methods by which the price of milk in California is kept higher than in any other state missed one other add-on charge that in my opinion is a true highlight of absurdity.
The National School Lunch Program requires that each meal include the offer of a half-pint of milk. The price of this milk has add-on marketing costs from both the federal milk marketing fund and state milk marketing fund. In other words, school districts are required by law to serve milk and are also required by law to pay for both the federal and state milk marketing funds that are assessed as part of distribution costs.
These advertising costs were voted on by milk processors. While the milk processors were the ones who voted, the milk consumers are the ones who pay for the actual advertising! Unlike McDonald’s or other corporations that pay for advertising out of revenue, the milk processors’ advertising campaign “is funded by a mandatory 20-cent per hundredweight assessment on all fluid milk products processed and marketed commercially in consumer-type packages by fluid milk processors in the 48 contiguous states and the District of Columbia.”
Perhaps the “Got Milk” campaign should be retitled “Got Hands in Your Pockets” campaign.
RICHARD K. DeBURGH
President-Elect, CSFSA
Fullerton
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