Milk Prices Rise to Record Highs

PARIS (AP) - It's cheaper than oil and, barring a global mad cow crisis, we'll probably never run out of it. But milk has one thing in common with oil: It's trading at record highs.

Reasons include growing appetites for dairy foods in China and elsewhere in Asia, where chains such as McDonald's and Starbucks are introducing unfamiliar taste buds to cheeseburgers and lattes. Other factors are rising costs for animal feed, shrinking European production and long-standing drought in Australia and New Zealand, the world's largest milk-exporting region.

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