Hamburg, July 1 - German farmers face action from the country's competition agency if they stage more milk delivery boycotts, the agency's president said on Tuesday.
Thousands of German dairy farmers staged a 10-day milk delivery strike in early June, refusing to deliver milk to dairies in a dispute over low prices which caused regional milk shortages.
The competition agency would start an investigation should another boycott be called, said agency president Bernhard Heitzer.
"There is the suspicion that this so-called milk strike was a call for a boycott which would be against competition law and against the ban on collusion to set prices," he said.
Should the agency judge any future boycott was breaking the law, the boycott could be declared illegal, he said.
Farmers' problems could not be solved with a "national milk price cartel to the disadvantage of consumers", he added.
German dairy farmers' association BDM had claimed victory in the dispute after supermarket chains agreed to raise prices. Farmers had claimed prices were so low they could not cover their production costs.
The BDM has said the strike would resume if dairies and supermarkets failed to implement promised price rises.
German and other EU milk prices have fallen sharply since April, when the European Union raised its production quota limits largely to calm the milk market which had seen prices shoot up EU-wide since June 2007.
The EU uses a system of compulsory milk production quotas, scheduled to be abolished in 2015, to stop over-production of subsidised milk and milk products. The EU permitted farmers to produce 2 percent more milk from April.
Meanwhile, EU agriculture commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel on Tuesday said separately she was against German calls for special financial aid for dairy farmers hit by plans to abolish EU milk production quotas.
She told a farmers' conference in Berlin the EU had no resources for such a fund and it was unrealistic to expect more EU finance to be directed towards farm aid.
Germany's government has called for extra EU aid to ensure dairy farming can continue after the end of quotas, especially in grassland areas where no alternative agriculture is possible.