Dairy farmers are protesting on Tuesday morning outside the Parmalat plant in NDG.

At 4 a.m. several dozen people stacked bales of hay in front of tanker trucks at the dairy processing plant on St. Jacques St. and Elmhurst Ave.

They are also holding banners urging consumers to boycott Parmalat for importing high-protein milk solids from the United States.

Canadian milk producers are highly protected under federal law, and so liquid milk that is imported to Canada is subject to high tariffs, milk solids are not.

"Our revenues are always going down and down and down and we're having problems to cover our production costs because of imported diafiltered milk that comes through the border. At the border it's considered modified dairy protein, and once it's across the border it's considered milk," said Trisha Walker, a dairy farmer from St. Georges de Windsor.

The milk solids are made through an ultra-filtration process called diafiltration, and farmers say that federal law prohibits diafiltered milk from being used in Canadian-made cheese.