The Milk System: A dangerous trade that puts profit over safety

Global dairy production and consumption has erupted and turned dangerous for the planet, livestock, farmers, and consumers.

The multi-billion-dollar industry is damaging our planet, livestock, farmers, and to some extent consumer health as it chases  increased profit-margins around the world, according to Netflix documentary The Milk System.

Directed by Andreas Pichler, the documentary reveals how European farmers are under enormous pressure to deliver quantity to make ends meet.

Burdened with debt and competition, some European farmer are suicidal others flat broke.

“Our whole existence depends on producing milk as cheaply as possible,” says Danish dairy farmer Peter Mouritsen.

This means livestock are sometimes crammed into unhealthy living pens, inseminated routinely, fed with unsustainable crops such as soy,  and in some extreme cases, genetically altered in the search for higher yields.

Mouritsen is an 18^th generation European farmer who inherited the business with 100-140 cows. He now owns 750 cattle on six farms, with 12 employees. But he says breaking even is tough work and has big bank debts.

“We have no power, no influence,” says German dairy farmer Margaret Geiger.

It is not the farmers who call the shots. According to Pichler it is the middle men – the dairies that sterilize, homogenise, pasteurise and market the product. They are expanding far and wide in search of more markets.

“As soon as we stop growing…we have a big problem,” says one European dairy executive.

Farmers say the price of their milk is set after they deliver it to the dairy. All this while they have to invest in expensive feed and animal husbandry.

Total EU milk production is estimated at 155 million tonnes per year. The main producers are Germany, France, Poland the Netherlands, Italy and Ireland. Together they account for 70% of milk production.

The dairies are lapping it up.  “Our company is like a refinery, from grass to glass” says the European dairy executive.

The milk yield per cow has increased and in 2020, EU figures show, some 20 million cows were producing 7,300 kg milk per cow.

For the cows, the stress of producing increasing yield means their lives are shortened. Pichler says they could live for 20 years but on average live only five. Bulls are put down if they are not sold.

Farmers stress to sell more milk, or lower our costs.

“This makes me angry. I question whether the system is working or not.

“We are 100% in debt today. We have to be better than everyone else and be at war with them. There’s no good will,” says Geiger.

For Geiger and other farmers, it is the EU subsidies that are keeping them afloat.

European citizens support the dairy industry to a tune of 16 billion euros a year, according to the charity Oxfam.  That amounts to $2 per cow a day, more than the minimum wage in poor countries

In the process, EU surplus milk and milk products are dumped onto the world’s poorest countries , destroying local livelihoods.

One Senegalese farmer says “it is the children of African farmers that are on the boats on the high seas…it is the children of the cattle breeders that are dying at sea.”

In Africa, farmers have to compete with cheap powdered milk products and they too are losing their livelihoods.

The Amazon rainforest is being cleared for soya plantations to feed the cows.  It is, says Pilcher, and ecological disaster. “We will never feed the world,” he says if we continue with these unsustainable practices.

For every litre of milk that a cow produces, it deposits three-times as much manure. An increasing problem.

The manure by-product nitrate can be a major source of air, water and crop pollution.  In Holland the soil has been so burdened by nitrates, said Pilcher, that the EU has threatened to prohibit milk production.

Do we as adults need milk anyway?

Milk promotes growth and makes young mammals grow fast. As adults, we don’t want this, and some scientists point to its cancer-causing potential.

“The health consequences of accelerated growth and greater adult height are complex.”

“Tall stature is associated with lower risks of cardiovascular disease but with higher risks of many cancers, hip fractures, and pulmonary embolism,” according to research by Dr Walter C. Willett.

Milk production and consumption in China is making headlines. Parents are hoping for stronger taller children and now it boasts the biggest milk-processing workshop in the world.

Is there a solution to the business of milk production?

The best guarantee for global food security is that we change our farming structures and revert to organic, scalable farms, say environmental experts.

Alexander Agethle has one such farm in Germany. His cows are out to pasture. He processes their manure fertilise his crops and processes the  milk to make cheese. All organic and sustainable.

“For me it’s a soul-full job. The animals are important,” he says, adding that the problem with modern agriculture is that we left it all to the economists.

“It is time to make agriculture a topic for ecologists, philosophers and economists,” he adds.

Article written by Julia M. Thompson- United Kingdom