Agriculture Ministry slams Smotrich’s planned dairy reform

The Agriculture Ministry slams Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s proposed dairy reform during a debate in the Knesset Committee for Public Projects, stating that the initiative undermines its own proposed national plan for food security, which aims to boost domestic production.

“The dairy reform harms our plan and cannot meet the goals it set for itself. When people talk about lowering the cost of living, they talk about total daily costs; an Israeli household spends only 1.6 percent on milk,” declares Yuval Lipkin, the head of the ministry’s Food Security Directorate.

Lipkin’s objections are echoed by farmers and opposition lawmakers, who argue that high dairy costs are driven in part by the requirements of kosher production.

In response, Finance Ministry representative Asael Tzur notes that the reform has already passed its first reading in the Knesset while the Agriculture Ministry’s plan has yet to receive government backing and argues that the dairy sector is operating as a “cartel.”

“The main part of our plan concerns the dairy sector by opening the industry to imports. We understand that this is not enough” and that the “local market also needs to be streamlined, so that dairy farmers can cope with the new rules of the game,” he says, adding that “we are doing this by lowering the target price,” the government-set rate paid to milk producers by the big dairy companies.