The Milk System

“Somehow I failed to realize that the milk we drink is from permanently pregnant cows. If there is no calf, there is no milk. Her milk doesn’t go to her calf, it goes to the consumer.”

“Our animals are just numbers today. They are ‘objects’ of profit. Baby newborn calves are just a ‘waste system’—they cost us money, so we just put them down. This is not a charity. The dairy business is deeply cruel to animals, no doubt.”

This interesting documentary takes a hard look at dairy farming today and the global dairy industry. The film raises serious questions, and offers answers: Is milk really good for you? Why not? Why is it so bad for the cows? Where do the newborn calves go after they are born? Why don’t newborn calves ever get to drink their own mother’s milk? Who profits at what costs? 

To dig deep into the truth and reality of dairy farming and milk production, the filmmakers interview scientists, nutritionists, dairy owners, farmers, lobbyists, politicians, and industry experts—to get the complete story on milk, milk production, industry growth, health impacts, and consequences to the animals themselves. The film takes us on a journey across the continents of Europe, Africa, China and North America, to understand the shocking truth behind this industry and system of production. 

At one point in the film, the viewer watches men peering out during a big industry dairy show examining, judging, and smiling at the female cows for how enormous and over-sized their utters are, almost to the point of bursting, exploding with the over-production of milk, as they smile on the sidelines. They don’t see the animal, they see an inanimate machine. It’s an eerie, frightening metaphor reminding us of the frightening series The Handmaids Tale, a horror show about how women are forced into sexual slavery to have as many babies as possible at the hands of men seeking progeny. You cannot escape from the gruesome and brutal comparison of dairy cows who are confined, raped, impregnated, and pregnant the majority of their short brutal lives, and the newborn calves that are immediately taken away from them. The parallels are stunning between the TV series and modern day dairy farming and practices where cows are valued only for their biology—and like the women in The Handmaids Tale, the cows endure a lifetime of misery, trauma, and suffering, while their newborn offspring are slaughtered and considered worthless by the tax-subsidized enormously powerful dairy industry. For consumers of milk and cheese.

Milk production today is pushing cows beyond their limits. Cows are treated as objects, like a race car. Today cows are seen as machines for production, not animals who suffer, not living beings who are sentient. The females are forced to produce a product for an industry that wants to profit from them at all costs, an industry that forces them to suffer daily to produce more and more milk, at the expense of the animal and their bodies. Does the system have a future and are there alternatives? Plant-based milk and cheese is the healthy, safe and cruelty-free alternative.

One thing for sure, something is seriously wrong …. when you are forcing an animal to produce way beyond their means and limits and killing their newborn baby to do it, something is not right. When farmers are committing suicide at an alarming rate, the suicide rate increasing every year. When the industry is and has been lying to consumers about the serious health dangers of consuming dairy products. When the industry is exporting new dairy products to unsuspecting new countries whose cancer and disease rates are rapidly increasing as a result. All when there are healthy, safe, cruelty-free alternatives in plant-based milk and products that cause less damage to the environment, the land, the animals and to people. 

Film Premier: 2017

Film Length: 98 Minutes

More About the Film

Watch the film on Amazon Prime

Watch the film on Netflix

See the film’s website

Quotes from the Film

“But the countries that have consumed the most milk have the highest bone fracture rates, and we have known this for some time now. This isn’t new news. Dairy causes an increase in bone bone fractures. You never want dairy products or to drink milk as an adult. Milk and dairy causes cancer—reproductive cancers—and a much higher risk of prostate, breast, ovarian and colon cancers. This has been known for a long time too.”

“The industry is working to get more milk into people’s diet, even though it causes disease, cancer, heart disease, and bone fractures.”

“Milk is not healthy like the industry claims. There is significant scientific and medical evidence that milk and dairy causes bone loss, bone fractures, heart disease, and cancer.”

“What’s been happening today is a cannibalization of the sector, they eat each other up without any consideration. People are becoming extremely inconsideration. Farmers backs are against the wall. Farmers are committing suicide – 600 farmers committed suicide in France last year.”

“In recent decades, the relationship between humans, animals and the industry has changed radically from the way it used to be.”

“The worst part of milk production – is for the cows, they are being “optimized” by the industry to force them to produce more milk through breeding. Cows today are “task optimized” bred specifically for milk production. They don’t look like the cows of yesterday.”

“Pregnancy is the most important part of having cows. We artificially inseminate cows every day. We don’t let her be empty for too long. She will give one calf a year. And if she cannot get pregnant anymore, unfortunately, she has to go. That’s the way it is.” 

“The male calves are all sold to fattening businesses for veal. The female calves are kept to produce milk.”

“Cows experience the energy-sapping task of pumping 20,000 liters of blood through their utters every day, for people who drink dairy milk. It is a huge expense of energy for the females.”

“The dairy industry scientists tell you what to feed cows to produce more milk from them – it’s about achieving maximum yield. More growth with less. As a family operation, we are reaching our limit. We are only working for the big corporations, the feed and food industry.”

“We barely have enough profit to cover our costs of operation and production anymore.” 

“How you treat the animals shows. They like walking. The cows today that are pushed to their limit live short lives.”

“Taxpayer’s fund and fuel the dairy industry, it’s a heavily subsidized industry by taxpayers.”

“The market in Europe is worth 100 B Euros and milk is sold by multi-national conglomerates. And once 1.3 billion Chinese got a taste of milk—the market exploded.”

“Our existence relies on producing milk as cheaply as possible. There’s a lot of pressure on price.”

“Today we have 3,500 farmers producing the same amount of milk that 37,000 farmers were a decade ago.”

“Like most European farmers it is a family business, but like most family farmers they are being forced to economize dramatically. Today, you are forced to deliver all milk to one dairy business. You have no power and no influence, like we did before.”

“Back in the day, our cattle were put out to pasture. But when you have so many cows now, that’s difficult. Taking them out and back is time-consuming, and then they have to be cleaned off due to the dirt and mud. That’s why we stopped putting them out to pasture. We had 100 cows back then.”

“Family businesses today need the milking robot. Politics made it harder and harder to milk cows the old way. Today you have to deliver more and more milk.”

“To me watching a cow graze, is so soothing and relaxing.”

“We feed her the highest quality feed to get her pregnant.”

“Cows can easily reach 20 to 25 years old, but the average of a milk producing cow today is barely 5 years. They are forced like machines to be constantly pregnant, bearing calves, then she is never allowed to nurture her calf – for milk that goes to humans.”

“In Europe, it has only been since the 1960s that the government has encouraged increased milk production.”

Film Credits

Film Director: Andreas Pichler

Writer and Producer: Andreas Pichler