text: Image caption Farmers used a platform to hose the European Parliament with milk 
   
   Angry farmers protesting at falling dairy prices in the EU have sprayed fresh milk at the European Parliament and riot police in Brussels. 
   
   Thousands of dairy farmers, accompanied by hundreds of tractors, descended on the Belgian capital on Monday for two days of demonstrations. 
   
   Disruption has continued, with EU officials hindered from reaching their offices by tractors blocking roads. 
   
   Farmers want an increase of up to 25% in their prices to cover costs. 
   
   EU milk is often sold at below production costs due to a drop in international demand and increased competition. 
   
   It's very simple: you can't live off milk any more Leopold Gruget , French farmer In pictures: Dairy farmers' protest 
   
   The European Milk Board (EMB), which is co-ordinating the protest, says small farmers are being forced out of business. 
   
   In Belgium, for example, the wholesale price for a litre of milk is 0.26 euros (£0.21; $0.34) but the cost of producing it is 0.40 euros, the board said. 
   
   Dairy farmers in Shropshire, England, recently won a price increase to £0.29 (0.36 euros) per litre from a leading processor but reported that the cost of production was still £0.31 (0.38 euros). 
   
   The EU is the world's largest milk producer and in 2010 nearly 47% of its 123bn euro budget went on subsidies and other forms of financial aid for farmers, including dairy producers. 
   
   'Killing us' 
   
   Police guarding the European Parliament found themselves being squirted with jets of milk on Monday as protesters directed hoses at the building. 
   
   Image caption The burning trailer sent a plume of smoke into the air 
   
   A trailer of hay was set alight on the nearby Place du Luxembourg, where a mock gallows was erected with what appeared to be a hanging dummy of a farmer. 
   
   "Politics are really killing us," Belgian farmer Julien Husquet was quoted as saying by the Associated Press news agency. 
   
   "It has to change very quickly at the European level. The way it is going, we are in big trouble." 
   
   "It's very simple: you can't live off milk anymore," French farmer Leopold Gruget told AFP news agency. 
   
   "If I go on, it's thanks to European aid... If they do it [phase out subsidies] there will be no more small and medium producers here in five years." 
   
   Some of the largest farmers' contingents have come from Denmark, France, Germany, the Republic of Ireland, the Netherlands, Poland and Spain, the EU Observer reports. 
   
   Erwin Schopges, head of the EMB in Belgium, said Tuesday's protests would be "symbolic" and calmer. ||||| BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Dairy farmers sprayed thousands of litres of fresh milk at the European Parliament in Brussels on Monday in protest at what they say are excessive milk quotas and prices below the cost of production. 
   
   Hundreds of farmers and tractors from across Europe took up position in a park near the European Commission and a square in front of the parliament in the early afternoon, after blocking traffic along several of Brussels' busiest streets. 
   
   They then turned their hoses on parliament, a collection of vast marble, glass and steel buildings on a Brussels square, and unleashed torrents of milk, some of it raining down on police and passers-by. 
   
   Afterwards they set alight barrels of hay and a pile of tyres, sending plumes of black smoke billowing into the sky. They plan to stay put outside parliament until Tuesday afternoon. 
   
   The European Milk Board, which coordinated the two-day protest, said prices with current quotas were putting small farmers out of business. 
   
   In Belgium, for example, the board said the wholesale price for a litre of milk was 0.26 euros, but the cost of producing it is 0.40 euros. 
   
   The EU is the world's largest milk producer and spends more than 40 percent of its annual 130 billion euro budget paying subsidies and other forms of financial support to farmers, including those in the diary industry. 
   
   It sets an annual milk quota - which sits at around 130 million tonnes, too much for EU-consumption - but has agreed to phase that out by 2015. 
   
   Farmers have held similar protests in the past, including one in 2009 which led to a small increase in wholesale prices. 
   
   On Monday, tractors came from across Belgium as well as neighboring France, Germany, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. Among a total of nearly 2,500 farmers, around 100 came from Poland, with many other nationalities also present. 
   
   ($1 = 0.7713 euros) 
   
   (Reporting By Philip Blenkinsop and Madeline O'Leary; Editing by Luke Baker and Alison Williams)
target: – Thousands of enraged dairy farmers converged on the European Parliament in Brussels yesterday, and sprayed the building, and the cops who showed up to contain them, with their stock in trade: milk. The protesters arrived on tractors, blocked traffic along many of the city's main streets, then pulled out hoses and let thousands of liters of the white stuff fly, Reuters reports. They also set fire to a trailer full of hay, and hung a nondescript body in effigy. The farmers are demanding a 25% bump in milk prices, which they say have become untenably low, the BBC reports; In Belgium, for instance, a liter sells for about $0.34 wholesale, but costs about $0.52 to produce. Part of the problem: the EU sets an annual quota of about 143 tons of milk, more than Europe can consume. "It's very simple: you can't live off milk anymore," one French farmer said. "If I go on, it's thanks to European aid."