Milk (butter, cheese and other dairy)

After my last post about the eco diet I realised I haven’t written about dairy. Butter, cheese and all the other good things that come from milk.

OK, here’s what you need to know about your pint.

Because most of the milk we use comes from cows, many of the environmental issues associated with the production of meat are also true for milk. The animals fart and burp a lot of methane. Which is a greenhouse gas and contribute to our warming climate.

However, if cows are farmed in a low intensive way, they also have some upsides. They produce manure, which is a pretty important fertilizer for organic farming and they also help create good habitats for wildlife such as birds. And unless you’re a vegan, you probably, like me, would find it hard to do without dairy.

The problem is that much of the milk we consume in the UK is intensively produced. And intensive dairy farming is pretty horrible for the poor cows.

Cows naturally live until they’re around 20 years-old. But most intensively reared dairy cows are slaughtered at five because they are so ill and exhausted.

A calf would naturally suckle a few litres a day from its mother. An intensive dairy farm will take around 50. They’re bred to have bigger udders than is natural so most of them have back problems. And in order to make sure they keep giving milk, they’re almost permanently pregnant. Poor old Daisy.

Because they’re so abused and spend their miserable days wedged in a shed with loads of the other unfortunate creatures, they’re given antibiotics and other drugs to keep them going. And this of course ends up in the milk we drink. Yuck.

Then there’s the problem of what to do with all the unwanted calves. And this is the bit that gets animal rights campaigners particularly twitchy.

Calves are generally taken from their mothers within hours of being born, causing them and their mother a fair amount of distress. The girls eventually replace their mothers. The boys are sold for veal or fattened up in intensive farms and eventually become low quality beef.

All pretty horrible.

But, you’ll be please to know, it’s actually pretty easy to avoid bad milk. And therefore also butter, yogurt, cheese and other dairy products.

As with most food, the answer is to buy organic.

Milk that’s certified organic has come from cows that eat better, have superior living conditions and spend a fair amount of time outdoors eating grass. Like you, cows are what they eat. Milk from cows that have eaten grass generally tastes better and is better for you.

Organic certification also means antibiotics are banned and young calves get to stay with their mothers for longer and aren’t weaned off milk for at least three months. So they generally have a decent life and give better quality milk.

And the good thing about organic milk is that there’s loads of it around. In fact we produce so much of it in this country, that it’s often mixed with intensively produced milk, rather than sold as organic milk. Which seems a bit of a waste. And because there’s lots of it, it’s generally not much more expensive than the regular stuff.

If you’re lactose intolerant, you’ll also be glad to hear that goats milk also is generally less intensively produced so is normally all right too.

Then there’s where you buy it.

Believe it or not, the traditional milkman is the most eco-friendly way to get your pint. The dairy is generally nearby, it’s transported in a vehicle powered by electricity and the container it comes in is reused. Good old milky.

If you want to find out if there’s a milk round near you then you can check www.findmeamilkman.net.

If you haven’t got a milkman or it’s not practical then the next best thing is to go for the new bags of milk that are appearing in supermarkets. They use 70% less packaging than the standard bottle, which if you drink a lot of milk will soon add up.

So having discovered how badly the poor old dairy cows are treated and given how wildly available and relatively cheap organic milk is, I’m going to stick to the organic pints of the white stuff from now on. And next time you’re reaching for your usual pint, I think you should give Daisy a thought too. Moo.

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