Author Topic: Ethical milk  (Read 30734 times)

Julian

  • samoture
Ethical milk
« on: 29 November, 2009, 08:53:06 am »
Does such a thing exist?

Cow milk we discussed a while ago & concluded that barely anybody pays the supplier a fair sum for their cow juice.  Plus, I'm not all that wildly keen on the way milk cows are treated.

But soy milk comes with its very own set of challenges, not least that forest is being destroyed to grow the soy.

Rice milk?

Keeping a goat at the bottom of the garden and milking that?

Re: Ethical milk
« Reply #1 on: 29 November, 2009, 09:39:37 am »
Lubcloud Dairy and organic farm

Their list of local outlets is not up-to-date but you get the idea.

It's not cheap: but then, it's not expensive either.
   

Re: Ethical milk
« Reply #2 on: 29 November, 2009, 10:00:51 am »
Naively I've never understood why dairy farmers don't co-operate in some collective national solidarity and refuse to supply until a fairer pricing structure is agreed.  When the dairies have nothing to process and plant, people and trucks lay idle it might sharpen their focus.  Who knows, even the politically lacklustre British public might get off it's arse to show some support when there's no milk for their cornflakes.  Of course some milk and dairy products can be imported for a limited period, but fresh milk in the quantities required would need a Berlin-airlift approach.  Unfortunately milk is a hugely under-appreciated and beneficial foodstuff wrongly maligned during the 'low-fat' years.
It's rare that I support 'union' style tactics, but in this case I think protection of an important primary supply is a battle worth fighting.

clarion

  • Tyke
Re: Ethical milk
« Reply #3 on: 29 November, 2009, 11:18:15 am »
Dairy is my downfall.  I know it's a terrible industry and a vicious trade, but I do love yoghurt & cheese.

I was vegan for a while, and even managed tea without milk for a long while (it stains your mugs faster :( ).  But I'd eat cheese butties every day if I could.  And that's an unacceptable vanity.

On the other hand, I never felt the need for soy milk.  There wasn't anything I wanted to use it for.

What I'm saying is that I don't really think there's a solution to your problem, Julian </rambling drivel>

I am a hypocrite. I know it.
Getting there...

Re: Ethical milk
« Reply #4 on: 29 November, 2009, 11:24:31 am »
There used to be the Milk Marketing Board that set a minimum price that farmers would get for milk (my Mum used to work for it). Unfortunately it was dissolved in the mid 90s.
I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that.

Re: Ethical milk
« Reply #5 on: 29 November, 2009, 01:27:16 pm »
Plus, I'm not all that wildly keen on the way milk cows are treated.


Particularly the male calves, eh?


Julian

  • samoture
Re: Ethical milk
« Reply #6 on: 29 November, 2009, 01:32:37 pm »
Well, exactly.  I don't see a huge ethical difference between eating veal and drinking milk; they're two halves of the same business.  But like Clarion, I have a dairy habit that I can't seem to give up.

Charlotte

  • Dissolute libertine
  • Here's to ol' D.H. Lawrence...
    • charlottebarnes.co.uk
Re: Ethical milk
« Reply #7 on: 29 November, 2009, 01:49:19 pm »
Meh.  I blame my milk habit on the fact that I used to go to school just up the road from the Milk Marketing Board in Thames Ditton.  We were always the first to get all the promotional stuff and I had it drummed into me from an early age that milk is good for you.

A life without cheese would now be a very sad place.

Mebbe we should get a cow?  Surely we could fit a small one in at the SEEKRIT BUNKER?
Commercial, Editorial and PR Photographer - www.charlottebarnes.co.uk

border-rider

Re: Ethical milk
« Reply #8 on: 29 November, 2009, 01:53:05 pm »
I'm sure it'd be very happy, but unless you keep it constantly making new cows the supply of milk will dry up.   it's going to get V crowded in there

This is where goats score - no need for constant pregnancy.

A goat is on the Volio Household acquisition list when we finally convince someone that they wish to sell their house.  And some chickens.

Mrs MV's mother may balk at taking over goatherding duties when we're away though...

Re: Ethical milk
« Reply #9 on: 29 November, 2009, 02:27:23 pm »
But soy milk comes with its very own set of challenges,
You mean apart from it being disgusting muck that I wouldn't pollute my house with the smell of, let alone my taste buds?
"A woman on a bicycle has all the world before her where to choose; she can go where she will, no man hindering." The Type-Writer Girl, 1897

Re: Ethical milk
« Reply #10 on: 29 November, 2009, 02:32:10 pm »
There used to be the Milk Marketing Board that set a minimum price that farmers would get for milk (my Mum used to work for it). Unfortunately it was dissolved in the mid 90s.

Which even more seriously stopped the Milk Race   :(


Re: Ethical milk
« Reply #11 on: 29 November, 2009, 02:40:28 pm »
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/6P9pJd4K734&rel=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/6P9pJd4K734&rel=1</a>

I particularly like the bit about allowable levels of pus and blood in milk.

Someone said to me that any argument for vegetarianism was an argument for veganism. I'm still neither but this thread has got me thinking.

re: soya and the rainforest - most of the soya goes to making cheap flour to bulk out bread and processed foods. And I doubt they bother with  growing organic soya so if you stick to organic soya milk you can be pretty guilt free. Then there's just the question of whether soya is actually very good for us.

And is it possible to stop it curdling in coffee




woollypigs

  • Mr Peli
    • woollypigs
Re: Ethical milk
« Reply #12 on: 29 November, 2009, 04:13:30 pm »
Rice milk?
How the heck does one milk a rice ?
Current mood: AARRRGGGGHHHHH !!! #bollockstobrexit

Re: Ethical milk
« Reply #13 on: 29 November, 2009, 04:50:25 pm »
I 'do' pigs these days, but for most of my working life, I've 'done' dairy cows.

The whole 'farmers don't get a fair price' is no truer for farmers than any other small business owner. If you buy milk from a local organic herd it's about as 'good' ethically, as you'll ever get, but as dairy cows have been bred selectively for generations for attributes to make them suitable for intensive farming there is bound to be a trade off in quality of life. Even organic cows give more milk than their median suspensory ligaments can cope with and don't have good longevity.

Goats are less intensively farmed, but their milk tastes goat-y. And you still need kids for goats to make milk- they dry off just like cows do! If you have a house cow you can keep her producing milk for years just like you can with goats, but the volume you'd get is pitiful. Long lactation is stressful on the udder- they become more susceptible to mastitis-causing organisms. In this country bull calves are not waste, or veal, they are reared for beef. Even my low moral standards struggled with the New Zealand approach to dairying, which I suspect is where kcass' examples come from. I quit, I couldn't believe they treated their stock as they did.
For your house cow, you need a Dexter.

Soya is GM, nearly everywhere except in the EU, so your soya milk would have to be organic, and grown far enough away from other non-organic soya. (Soya is permissible protein for animal feed, a much bigger market than for human consumption). And soya doesn't grow well in the UK, so think of those food miles.

Rice milk is yakky.

So, no, you can't get ethical milk, except from your mum.
Lots of cultures just don't drink milk. It's for babies, not grown ups!

Gandalf

  • Each snowflake in an avalanche pleads not guilty
Re: Ethical milk
« Reply #14 on: 29 November, 2009, 05:05:50 pm »
I thought milk was for calves myself.  I must confess to getting mildly irritated by the hairshirtery applied to soya milk. 

If somebody can give me figures which show that soy produced for soya milk is anymore than an vanishingly miniscule percentage of that produced for cattle feed for beef farmers I'll pack it in tomorrow.

Re: Ethical milk
« Reply #15 on: 29 November, 2009, 05:15:26 pm »
I 'do' pigs these days, but for most of my working life, I've 'done' dairy cows.

You'll have to tell me about the  cows next time we ride together - did you need a much bigger receptacle than for pigs. It sounds more dangerous too

Julian

  • samoture
Re: Ethical milk
« Reply #16 on: 29 November, 2009, 05:15:52 pm »
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/6P9pJd4K734&rel=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/6P9pJd4K734&rel=1</a>

I particularly like the bit about allowable levels of pus and blood in milk.

I eat liver, I'm not likely to get bothered about consuming cow blood.  ::-) ;D

Quote
Someone said to me that any argument for vegetarianism was an argument for veganism. I'm still neither but this thread has got me thinking.

A long time ago I was vegan, for exactly that reason.  I'm not these days, and in fact I think I'm probably happier about eating free range / organic / wild meat than about consuming industrial-produced dairy. 

Quote
re: soya and the rainforest - most of the soya goes to making cheap flour to bulk out bread and processed foods. And I doubt they bother with  growing organic soya so if you stick to organic soya milk you can be pretty guilt free. Then there's just the question of whether soya is actually very good for us.

Food miles.  And like Gandalf says, most soy is produced for cattle feed, so every time anyone has a burger they're inadvertently hacking down forest. 

Obviously soy milk even with being imported from Long Away, and the deforestation, it's still more ethical than cow milk.  Question is, is there such a thing as totally ethical milk product, soy, rice, hemp or otherwise? 

Quote
And is it possible to stop it curdling in coffee

Yes!  Wait for the coffee to cool down first.

Re: Ethical milk
« Reply #17 on: 29 November, 2009, 05:25:48 pm »
not a vegan but i love soya milk, cows milk smells of cow, and makes my throat goopy. sweetened soya (co-op best, then tesco, alpro, etc) is lush, and manages not to taste of ground up beans in water and apple juice.

Re: Ethical milk
« Reply #18 on: 29 November, 2009, 05:44:31 pm »

Mebbe we should get a cow?  Surely we could fit a small one in at the SEEKRIT BUNKER?


It could double as a guard cow.
[Quote/]Adrian, you're living proof that bandwidth is far too cheap.[/Quote]

simonp

Re: Ethical milk
« Reply #19 on: 29 November, 2009, 05:53:57 pm »
but,

Quote
Men who drank the most milk had a lower risk of ischaemic heart disease or stroke than those who drank the least, and in the case of stroke this risk was significantly lower. The findings held true even for those men who had started out drinking full fat milk.

The authors suggest that milk has had something of a bad press in respect of its impact on cholesterol, and they conclude: "The present perception of milk as harmful, in increasing cardiovascular risk, should be challenged, and every effort should be made to restore it to its rightful place in a healthy diet."

and,

Quote
Results: Poor cognitive test performance, enlargement of ventricles and low brain weight were each significantly and independently associated with higher midlife tofu consumption. A similar association of midlife tofu intake with poor late life cognitive test scores was also observed among wives of cohort members, using the husband’s answers to food frequency questions as proxy for the wife’s consumption. Statistically significant associations were consistently demonstrated in linear and logistic multivariate regression models. Odds ratios comparing endpoints among "high-high" with "low-low" consumers were mostly in the range of 1.6 to 2.0.

Conclusions: In this population, higher midlife tofu consumption was independently associated with indicators of cognitive impairment and brain atrophy in late life.

So I'd be wary of switching to soya milk from cow's milk, because it appears to be a bad idea (though it could be some other ingredient in tofu that's to blame).

Re: Ethical milk
« Reply #20 on: 29 November, 2009, 06:06:59 pm »
Rice milk is yakky.

No - yaks milk is yakky.
Quote from: Kim
^ This woman knows what she's talking about.

jogler

  • mojo operandi
Re: Ethical milk
« Reply #21 on: 29 November, 2009, 06:12:04 pm »

Re: Ethical milk
« Reply #22 on: 29 November, 2009, 06:12:47 pm »
And nearly everyone in the West is genetically adapted to drink cows milk we have been doing it for so long. Not so for those from the east of course.
I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that.

andygates

  • Peroxide Viking
Re: Ethical milk
« Reply #23 on: 29 November, 2009, 06:22:04 pm »
Rice milk?
How the heck does one milk a rice ?
With tweezers and a thimble.

I go with organic cow milk.  Organic has a set of welfare standards.

Soy milk is nice sometimes - I'm a soy latte slut - but soy cheese is an abomination unto the LORD.
It takes blood and guts to be this cool but I'm still just a cliché.
OpenStreetMap UK & IRL Streetmap & Topo: ravenfamily.org/andyg/maps updates weekly.

ludwig

  • never eat a cyclists gloves
    • grown in wales
Re: Ethical milk
« Reply #24 on: 29 November, 2009, 06:45:43 pm »
I buy this stuff. The farm is about 3 miles away. Nothing on the site about welfare standards though

Daioni : Story