French kiss-off

A few days ago Cash Investigations, a major French TV show, aired a long documentary on the French dairy industry. Lactalis, recently in the news, has paid less than the cost of production to French dairy farmers for three years, as have other companies.

The programme also went to Canterbury, to an irrigated 1600-cow farm. A local then took us to a dry, algae-ridden streambed; four years ago this stream was healthy.

Next, we saw a wide ‘‘channel’’ funnelling turgid, dairy-polluted water into an unnamed lake (Ellesmere?).

We met Mike Joy with a simple computer graphic showing 20 green-to-red gradations of nitrate concentrations over New Zealand. Then we saw this picture morph into the four new water-quality divisions now mandated.

Magically, all New Zealand but a few small ‘‘red’’ spots was now green.

The graduated severity of the problem had been erased by moving the goal posts.

The incongruity of the ‘‘Clean Green’’ New Zealand image was highlighted, and that water quality is paying for the overproduction of a global milk industry.

Our dairy-driven environmental failings have been exposed to a huge French audience.

We obviously can’t hide. When will the dairy industry do something really effective about its pollution? CLIVE THORP Kelburn