Have you lived in Humboldt and purchased milk here “during at least part of 2003 to the present”? Oh, you have? Well then you were the victim of milk price fixing and are eligible to get paid! 

Such was ruling in an antitrust class-action lawsuit which found that various dairy producers (such as Land O’ Lakes, Dairy Farmers of America, Agrimark and others) illegally acted to limit the supply of raw milk. 

How did they do this? Well, now that’s a sad tale. The dairy industry referred to the practice as “herd retirement,” but really, the court found, they just killed thousands of peak-producing milk cows. This from an article on the case from the Washington Post:

The cows were neither old nor unproductive. Indeed, that was the problem. They were capable of producing plenty of milk at a time of glut, thereby bringing down the price of dairy products for consumers.

Over the course of seven years — in a scheme to hike up prices for milk products — dairy producers conspired to slaughter more than 500,000 young cows, the nationwide class-action lawsuit alleged.

The plan worked. Again according to the Post, the lawsuit found that the “herd retirement program” raised cumulative revenues by over $9 billion dollars from 2004 to 2008. In August of last year the dairy producers agreed to settle for $52 million.

And so, because hundreds of thousands of bovines were wrongly butchered, you are eligible for some cash. Milk product consumers in 15 states and the District of Columbia can head over to BoughtMilk.com and submit a three-click claim for the chance to receive between $5 and $15, or upwards of $140 if you are part of an organization that bought milk in bulk. More details at that site, but make sure you file before the Jan. 31, 2017 deadline.