Milk still has a place in our greener world

In the face of dairy-free alternatives, producers of real milk are finding new ways to fight back

XANTHE CLAY

ow do you like your milk in the morning? Splashed in tea, sloshed over cereal, whizzed into a smoothie or frothed on to a coffee, the chances are it came out of a plastic supermarket bottle. It’s become a standardised, faceless commodity product, a far cry from the traditional glass bottle delivered by a cheery milkman.

Not only that, in a bid to tempt us in store, some supermarkets have been selling it at cut-throat prices which leave farmers financially desperate. Concerns have been raised over cows treated as “milk machines” on mega dairies, kept indoors and milked intensively before slaughter at the age of five or six years once their yields drop.

The quality has been questioned too. As the website for the dairy arm of the Government-sponsored Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board states: “Some contracts [between farmer and supplier] may simply reward the production of ‘white water’ or raw milk without defined constituent characteristics” – characteristics which include protein levels and milk hygiene.

Add to that worries about the environmental impact of intensive meat and dairy farming, with the UN identifying it as playing a major role in climate change, although British farmers point out that here in the UK government figures show it is responsible for just 10 per cent of our total carbon emissions. More radically, in last week’s documentary on Channel 4, Apocalypse Cow, campaigning journalist George Monbiot advocated ditching meat and dairy production altogether in favour of protein produced by bacteria fed on hydrogen.

No wonder that recently there’s been a much-trumpeted surge in sales of “mylk” or “m*lk” or “milk alternative” made from oats, soy, rice or almonds and even peas, the latest in the roll call of foods to be processed into white liquid, by grinding and soaking, after which enzymes may be added, along with emulsifiers and oils, before it is pumped into a long-life container ready to slosh on our cornflakes. According to market experts Kantar, sales of “free from