Dairy is a big issue in need of a quick solution

The £26m. proposal to rebuild the Dairy is trying to jump the queue, barging forward without consideration for all the other important plans standing in line.

It should wait its turn and demonstrate why it deserves to be considered.

In a perfect world it would work just like that.

Except the situation is anything but perfect. The Dairy project has been dawdling in the wings, waiting to be invited forward as the post-war building has crumbled and the machinery fallen apart.

With no significant work since 1989 the premises at Bailiff’s Cross are beyond patch and repair. The outdated equipment has been crammed into awkward spaces and only the ingenuity of Heath Robinson is keeping it operating.

Plus the business is losing almost £400,000 a year.

If the States’ Trading Supervisory Board’s policy letter is to be believed the situation is critical. Delay too much and the Dairy could lose its hygiene licence and be unable to process eight million litres of farmers’ milk.

At that point cheap off-island milk would flood the market, 38 staff would lose their jobs and dairy farms would quickly go bust, leaving over 8,000 vergees of prime pasture and 1,400 milking cows to their fate.

The final chapter of this gloomy prophecy is the permanent loss of the Guernsey cow breed in its native island.

It is dire stuff, and possibly overegged.

But there is no doubt that the Dairy is a big problem in need of a quick solution. Policy & Resources may have a file full of important projects but that does not invalidate this one.

It would be a major failure of government if Guernsey milk, a product consumed by nine out of ten households, was no longer in our fridges.

Even with a vote in favour this week the Assembly is a long way from stuck with the £26m. rebuild plan. A site for the new Dairy has not even been identified.

The worry has to be not that the Dairy project is moving ahead too quickly. It is that the solution will come too late.