Craig From San Bernardino

My name is Craig and I am one of the founders of StopQIP Dairy Tax. It is a coalition of California Dairy farmers, who are unhappy about a tax that has been levied on our industry and Gavin and the Department of Agriculture have refused to let us vote on the tax. In the last year alone we have turned in three different petitions, and we have not been given the okay to vote on this tax. We pay a billion dollars every 6.3 years and the money doesn’t go to the state to be used for the industry, but it goes to a select minority of the dairymen in the state for their personal use. It is an outrageous tax without representation and it is all back by our government. We have appealed to Gavin Newsom and his Secretary of Agriculture Karen Ross to no avail.

I have 7 dairies in the Chino Dairy shed and we milk over 3000 cows and raise another 3000 heifers, but this tax has forced me to put my dairies up for sell. We have over 50 employees and our milk sales are over 14 million a year. We ship most of our milk to a Creamery who biggest accounts are the schools in Los Angeles and with Gavin shutting everything down it has cost us millions of dollars in losses.

I also own three other feed companies in Chino, and in Visalia California, that last year grossed over 19 million in sales, down from 26 million the previous year. We sell to the dairy industry and our receivables ae stretching out past 180 days and the future looks worse then this last year of disaster.. Gavin and his short sightedness is causing hundreds of people losing their jobs with no return in sight. He cares more about making his rich buddies, richer like Matt Swanson who donate to his campaign, then about the workers of this state who throughout this CoVId have come to work everyday so he can transfer their money to these rich dairymen who clip a coupon each month making millions of dollars on the backs of hardworking men and women of this great state. He needs to go and go yesterday.