California milk advertisement leaves critics intolerant

LOS ANGELES – The California Milk Advisory Board may have shot itself in the hoof.

The board, which promotes the state’s dairy farmers and is overseen by the California Department of Food and Agriculture, is preparing to film its latest commercials urging consumers to drink California milk from California cows – in New Zealand.

In January, it plans to shoot part of its next series of 10 California “Happy Cow” TV commercials in Auckland, taking advantage of the country’s low production costs.

It’s the latest and, critics contend, perhaps most flagrant example to date of so-called runaway production that has caused thousands of jobs losses in the Los Angeles area as other countries and states have siphoned away film and TV crews with lucrative financial incentives.

Local union officials were upset to learn that the state milk board was farming out TV work to foreign locales.

“It’s totally out of line,” said Ed Duffy, business agent for Teamsters, Local 399, which represents location managers, studio drivers and casting directors. “If they’re promoting California products, they should be shooting in California. We have enough trouble trying to keep movie productions in Los Angeles.”

Milk board officials, however, defended the planned New Zealand shoot, saying it represented a “minor portion of production” and was a matter of simple economics. The board solicited bids from around the world, and the New Zealand site was the lowest, said Michael Freeman, the board’s vice president of advertising.

“It was a no-brainer,” he said. “The dairy industry is facing the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. We have a fiduciary responsibility to spend their hard-earned dollars as efficiently as we can. In this particular case, we found significant costs savings by shooting a portion of this product overseas.”