Western United Dairymen today filed a petition with the California Department of Food and Agriculture asking for action on two fronts: First, emergency price relief due to the current financial pressures on dairy producers, notably due to extremely high feed costs. WUD is requesting a six month increase of 50 cents per hundredweight on all classes of milk. Second, changes to the whey value of the Class 4b formula. WUD is requesting the cap of $0.75 per hundredweight to be removed by proposing a scale that mirrors more closely the whey value in Class III. WUD is also proposing a dry whey exemption on the first 100,000 pounds of milk processed daily by cheese makers. The exemption would be only on the whey portion of the Class 4b formula. “WUD is deeply concerned about the current plight of dairy families and while a fifty cent temporary price increase will not make dairy margins positive again, we believe that such an emergency price relief is required to at least “slow the bleeding”, said WUD President Tom Barcellos. To download a copy of the petitions, please click here  Aug. 6, 2012 WUD News