Dear Dairy Community,
We are asking you to sign on to a letter to House Agriculture Committee Chairman GT Thompson expressing our industry support for expanding the Healthy Fluid Milk Incentives Projects (HFMIP) to include cheese, yogurt, and all varieties of fluid milk.
You can read the full letter to Chairman Thompson here.
As we have previously reported, Chairman Thompson has indicated that the Committee will meet before Memorial Day to take up his draft Farm Bill. While it remains unknown if Congress will pass a Farm Bill this year, it is still important that the Chairman’s draft bill reflects our organization’s Farm Bill priorities.
Expanding HFMIP to include all varieties of fluid milk as well as cheese and yogurt has been our top priority during our fly-ins and meetings with the Chairman and other Agriculture Committee members over the past two years. While we have been unable to obtain certainty that language to expand the HFMIP (H.R. 5099), and Chairman Thompson has publicly stated plans to move the Farm Bill in the Ag Committee before Memorial Day, we want to again express our request that this language is included in the Chairman’s draft text in the coming days.
As the Memorial Day recess approaches, we are inviting industry companies, cooperatives, and organizations to sign the attached letter to the Chairman reiterating our request that he include the language in H. R. 5099 in his draft Farm Bill that would expand the current SNAP milk incentive program to include all varieties of fluid milk, as well as nutritious cheese and yogurt products.
I strongly encourage you to add your organization to this letter which we plan to send to the Chairman by COB Wednesday, May 8th.
Dave Carlin (dcarlin@idfa.org) and Rob Rosado (rrosado@idfa.org) are available to answer any questions you may have, and we will also discuss this effort during our Issues Briefing at the board meetings next week.
Thank you for your continued support for these Farm Bill priorities.
Sincerely,
MICHAEL DYKES, D.V.M.
President and CEO,
International Dairy Foods Association
