THE plight of North-East dairy farmers has been raised in the European Parliament.

Paul Brannen told fellow Euro MPs how he had visited brothers Richard and Dennis Gill who have 300 dairy cows on their farm near Ponteland and who have seen their milk price fall from 33ppl early last year to 24ppl today .

He said: "As a result of the fall in the price of milk over the last eight months they are now receiving a dip in income of a quarter of a million pounds. They are clearly struggling, as are dairy farmers across the UK."

Mr Brannen, Labour MEP for the North East and his party's European Parliamentary spokesman on agriculture and rural development, called on the EU, the UK government and consumers to act to ensure dairy farmers get a fair deal.

He said: "One thing that customers can do is ask their supermarket managers if they are ensuring that they are paying a fair price for all of the milk that they have on sale in the supermarket. Customer power can be used to deliver a fair price for our farmers. It is right that dairy farmers milk cows, but it is wrong if supermarkets and customers milk dairy farmers."

The price of milk in some UK supermarkets has dropped from £1.39 to just 89p and can be cheaper than water.

Mr Brannen said: "It is simply not fair for a dairy farmer to be paid less for a litre of milk than it costs to produce. We must collectively and speedily inject fairness into the relationship between dairy farmers, processors, supermarkets and, importantly, customers.

"We want to see more powers given to the Groceries Code Adjudicator, whose role it is to ensure there is fair play between British food processors and retailers, so she can take action across the supply chain.

"We also want the UK government to write to the banks encouraging them to be as supportive as possible of dairy farmers during this difficult period, including making loans available.

"And in the longer term we want to see farmers working together more, in order to increase their clout in the market and move themselves up the supply chain, by investing in food processing and the production and marketing of processed products such as cheese and yoghurt, as this is where the money can be made."

He said customers have an important role to play, by showing supermarkets that they do not want to be unwittingly involved in putting UK dairy farmers out of business as a result of buying cheap milk.

Mr Brannen said: "We are calling on the British consumer to ask probing questions of their supermarket manager, as they have done in the past about fairly traded products from the developing world, to find out if a fair price has been paid to the farmer for the milk we buy."

Sian Davies, the NFU's chief dairy adviser, said: "We very much agree that the dairy sector needs support from every angle at the moment, and that includes work in Brussels in overcoming barriers to export markets and reviewing the EU intervention price for dairy products.

"In the UK we're heartened by consumer interest in and support for our dairy farmers and the high quality dairy products they produce. We continue to ask consumers to buy British on all dairy products.W"