Kehl, Germany  - German and French dairy farmers who have been dumping milk in the ground as a protest against low farm-gate prices poured a token quantity Saturday into the Rhine river between their two nations.

Between 60 and 70 German tractors and 10 from France, hauling 35 big tanks of milk, blocked a main road bridge connecting the French city of Strasbourg to its German suburb Kehl for 45 minutes.

The dairy farmers poured just 2 litres of milk into the water below, to avoid polluting the river.

They then drove from the Europe Bridge to a nearby field to dump an estimated 175 tons of milk on the soil.

The alliance of dairy farmers in several western European nations have been protesting for more than a week, using attention-grabbing ways to waste milk instead of selling it to dairy factories.

They object to what they say are uneconomic prices paid for milk and are demanding political intervention to re-align the dairy market.  dpa