Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what support his Department plans to provide to goat farmers affected by the loss of contracts as a result the oversupply of goat's milk.

The Government is aware of the predicament facing producers of goat’s milk following the decision by two processors to give notice of contract termination to at least some of their suppliers. Whilst this is fundamentally a commercial matter to which producers and processors are best placed to develop a sustainable solution, we welcome the recent statement from the Milking Goats Association encouraging goats’ milk producers to engage closely with their processors, and to establish export relationships and new markets.