Butter mountain

In the following decades, production continued to outstrip demand, and the European governments and later the European Union would purchase tonnes of the surplus agricultural goods, creating so-called "milk lakes" and "butter" or "beef mountains".

[3] In West Germany, between 1979 and 1985, excess butter was sold at discounted prices under the direction of the Federal Ministry for Food, Agriculture and Forests and was limited to 1 kg (2.2 lb) per household.

[2] The packages were labelled as being the product of intervention stockpiles and were specifically intended to reduce that oversupply.

In 2007, rising demand and planned reforms were forecast to eliminate the oversupply of milk and butter eventually.

[4] In 2017, it was reported that European butter stockpiles had largely disappeared because of increased demand and dwindling production, which caused shortages and rising prices.