FAKE FRESH MILK

Fresh milk is meant to be exactly that, and this week the ACCC made Lactalis pay $59,400 in penalties for selling powdered milk dressed up as fresh.

This win started with dairy whistleblowers who trusted me with the evidence. I took their information straight to the ACCC as a formal complaint, the investigators dug in and they found Lactalis had been adding substantial amounts of reconstituted powder to its Golden North Country Fresh and Ferguson Valley WA Dairy Fresh two litre bottles while the label told you it came straight from the farm. Once the ACCC came knocking, the word fresh came off both labels pretty quickly.

This fraud hurt people at both ends of the supply chain. Families paid fresh prices for powdered milk while the dairy farmers who get up before dawn to produce the real thing were forced to compete against a lie. When a label says fresh, you should be able to believe it.

Lactalis is not a first offender either. The same company copped a $950,000 penalty in 2022 for breaching the Dairy Code of Conduct. A $59,400 fine is loose change to a global milk giant, so I will keep pushing until they do the decent thing and apologise to every customer they misled.

The real heroes here are the whistleblowers who came forward. It takes guts to speak up against a company that size and this result proves what I keep saying, when country people find their voice and use it, they get results. If you know something the rest of us should know, my door is always open.