Milk farmers from eight European countries said after a meeting in Paris that they were prepared to strike to press their demands for higher prices and a cut in milk production quotas. The current European farms policy is destroying European milk farmers, European Milk Board (EMB) head Romuald Schaber said at the meeting.

Schaber, a German, said he would cease milk deliveries immediately, although a court in Dusseldorf judged it was illegal under competition law for the German Dairy Farmers’ Federation to organise boycotts. Germany’s Federal Cartel Office threatened to fine the German group if it ever again organised a strike like that in April 2008. The association then appealed to the courts, but lost. The head of the French producers’ association OPL, Daniel Condat, said the delivery boycott would be expensive.

If many farmers throw their milk away, we will get a hearing before the end of next week, he vowed. As many as 30,000 French milk farmers were expected to take part in the strike. It was not clear how many farmers in other countries would participate. In Berlin, a spokesman for German dairy farmers said his association is not allowed to call for (a strike), and won’t be calling for it.

Farmers would have to decide individually for themselves. In addition to France and Germany, the countries involved in the action are Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland, Italy and Luxembourg. Milk farmers fiercely oppose the European Commission’s plan to end the milk quota system in 2015, claiming that it would lead to a drastic fall in prices and threaten their existence.