They're Not Just Competing for Oil Any More

Milk prices in Germany are about to jump - by 50%. The culprit? The Chinese. The Chinese have discovered a thirst for milk and they don't have the dairy industry to meet their own demand. So, according to the Guardian, they're raiding German supplies:

The Chinese have been dubbed "milk snatchers" by German consumers for buying so much milk that prices of dairy products in Germany are expected to soar by 50%.

A third of all the milk produced worldwide is now being transported to China, much of it from the EU and a significant amount from Germany, which produces 27bn litres a year.

Now outraged consumer groups and politicians have called for the government to raise unemployment benefit to cover the rise.

Yesterday supermarkets across the country reported that shoppers were panic buying dairy products in an attempt to beat the price increase.

The only effective way to increase global milk yields without breaking the milk quotas, according to experts, is to encourage the breeding of cows outside the EU. German dairy farmers have duly been selling their best high-performance milk cows to Chinese farmers, who are receiving government subsidies if they switch to dairy farming.