Ontario dairy farmers to ramp up milk donations to food banks amid novel coronavirus pandemic

Amid the novel coronavirus pandemic, Ontario dairy farmers will ramp up their milk donations to food banks across the province, with Dairy Farmers of Ontario contributing up to an additional 200,000 litres.

“Food banks, on a regular basis, are always in need of additional milk,” said Carolyn Stewart, the executive director of Feed Ontario, which represents food banks across the province.

“This donation just goes above and beyond the commitment that the industry has already made.”

Dairy Farmers of Ontario (DFO) will donate $100,000, plus up to 200,000 litres of milk in increments, which will accompany the more than one million litres that it already donates to food banks every year with the Ontario Dairy Council and the Ontario Milk Transport Association.

The total litres of milk that are donated to Feed Ontario will support more than 500,000 people as the province grapples with fighting the COVID-19 pandemic.

“At the beginning of all this, we quickly recognized there was a lot of people who were going to be out of jobs and going to struggle to make ends meet,” Murray Sherk, the chair of Dairy Farmers of Ontario, told Global News.

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“We initially did the $100,000 donation to Feed Ontario in order to help with that. After that, we wanted also to be able to contribute actual dairy products, and so we then were able to work out a program where we’re going to be able to donate up to 200,000 litres more.”

Since Ontario activated its COVID-19 emergency declaration, food banks across the province have been distributing more food to people, according to Stewart.

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