ACCORDING to newspaper reports, the truth about supermarket efforts to cheat both their customers and their dairy suppliers emerged at the weekend after years of procrastination and denial - with massive fines of £116million on two of the major food retailers.

Sainsbury's and Asda, along with several dairy companies, face these fines from the Office of Fair Trading after they admitted colluding to increase the price of milk, butter and cheese whilst at the same time drastically slashing the prices they paid to farmers for their milk, the Daily Mail reported.

According to the NFU, the price per litre was reduced by almost 3.5p per litre between 1995 and 2006, forcing thousands of dairy farmers out of business and producing a situation where, in the near future, Britain could face a milk shortage.

In the meantime, the supermarkets charged their customers an extra 3p for a pint of milk, 15p on a standard pack of butter and 15p on half a pound of cheese, adding millions to their already massive profits.

Two other major chains, Tesco and Bradford-based Morrison's, which deny they were part of the price-fixing ring, are still under investigation by the OFT.