Obscene exploitation: your milk and your coffee

Last Sunday Swedish TV showed a German documentary from 2017 “The milk system” by Andreas Pichler. (I watch it a few days later on internet (SVTplay). If you live in Sweden you find it there to April.)

If you watch that movie and then go to the fridge to take a glass of highly processed industrially produced – and actually drink it, you must be something special hardboiled. But for me this movie has become a radical change in my customer habits!

Actually we haven’t seen such cruel exploitation of living creatures since the child labor during the Industrial Revolution of 1700 – and 18 century. It is horror back!

The modern system of exploited food production destroys  normal farming and is a death sentence for the existence of individual farmers and their families.

It is an elaborate system of cruelty to animals. It is an elaborate system to fool customers to buy food said to be healthy for them (a statement that is so doubtful that the industry should be called fraudsters).

It is a production which is a danger to the environment here and in South America (the depletion of rainforests to produce GMO soy for to feed the cows).

Not even the people and nature and animals in west suffers from this pestilence of greed. Now the milk industry are in both China and Africa. Like in Europe the industry kills local farmers and diaries in Africa, make the countries there without means for work, becoming even more poor and starving.

It is even claimed in this movie those young men we all know about, who flee over the oceans to drown or end up as slaves in Libya, are sons of the cattle breeders who lost their livelihood because of multinational monster business as ARLA and Friesland Campina.

For my personal part I’ve been a lakto-vegetarian for decades. I was further more brought up on farms as my father worked as herd manager. (Which I believe might be the English word for a farm worker who is responsible for the care of the milk cows and the milk production?) Anyway, at that times a farmer could have 20 or 50 cows and still have people employed. (But I don’t say it was Paradise times.)

This my background as a child spending time in a cowshed makes me less sensitive of the use of cows for milk production. (So the common vegan argument is not working on me.)

Another thing not mentioned in the movie  talking special to me being a country girl, is not only the breeding giving the cow disabling udders that I found shocking. With my background spent time in cow shelf and seen it from close I was also disgusted of the dirt from feces. It was feces on the digs, the teat cups, the iron bars and the floor – and the workers clothes.

It seems these abnormal breeds of cows suffer from constant diarrhea due to their feeding state.

It is no problem for you as a customer for the heating of milk at the dairies kills the bacterial (pasteurization) . Happy now, going on drinking this industrial product with the white soul and face of an innocent angel, are you?

But not me, no!

my son drawn by friend during those work meetings he hates

I ordered (yes, I actually did!) my son to watch the movie too. But he was not able to watch the whole, it was too shocking for him. (Those cows have really suffering faces and their questing eyes is heartbreaking!)

But my son said he surely will go vegan – to the summer. “Why summer, it is a long time till then”, I said. “I need to experiment with alternatives”, he said.

Well, he seldom eat dairy products so it can’t be that difficult! Personally I will not need any experimental doings. Because I have already in a couple of days changed my diet!

To now I have bought the following dairy products:
Yoghurt
Smetana (sour crème)
Cheese
Butter
Cottage cheese
Fresh cheese
Halloumi
Feta cheese

I have used butter and olive oil for cooking. But from now it will be only olive oil and rapeseed oil.

There is vegan alternatives for cream and sour cream. I have already for a time used a label called Oatly, 13% cooking cream – as it tastes so good.

For my sandwiches I have now bought a vegan butter and a vegan fresh cheese (it’s Oatly too and luckily it tastes very good!)

When it comes to alternative dairy products there are a few local producers everywhere. The problems are the local groceries. All groceries have a whole wall of dairy products with all kinds of flavor and mostly – from ARLA.

I have at an earlier time asked for a natural yoghurt which label I liked very much but had problems to find in groceries. “It is not selling” I was answered. The same now with the milk from the alternative dairy close to my city. Luckily I have another grocery nearby that is still selling products from those local producers. (It is seven local farmers join together in a small dairy to challenge ARLA, I’m glad to now be a supporter!)

So I still eat yoghurt – but from those local small scale producers. Their cheese I can’t buy though as it is made with animal rennet. I have instead bought their dairy’s cream and mixed it with their yoghurt for a homemade fresh cheese.

There is an also a small scale producer in Sweden of feta cheese and halloumi, coming from free range goats and cheeps in Greece. Those product I will buy from now on.

homemade alfalfa sprouts

I will not go straight vegan then. But those who wants to do it, it is quite easy – but as far I see in Sweden there is commercial market in this area too. For example: for some years ago I could buy a small pack alfalfa seed for to grow sprouts for about a little more than one Euro. Nowadays I must buy the same product by a big “alternative” producer for about 7 Euro! I have found it is the same with a lot of “vegan” products. (It really pisses me off!) So if you want alternatives you still have to observant! You don’t need those expensive products to be a vegan!

Still it is probably easier to go straight vegan than to search for an alternative lactovegetarian diet!

There is a nice vegan blog I would like to recommend:
http://www.onearabvegan.com/

So you can be a Muslim and be a vegan.
(No excuses for you, then!)

 

Now I will finally talk about coffee!

I have a favorite blend of coffee. Last I was buying coffee the grocery had a special offer: I could buy three package for the price of two. Unfortunately the shells was a mess and very empty because other customer had been there before me – so I became standing there a while to find something at all for me to buy. Thinking! Reflecting!

I realized my favorite coffee blend has three variants of the coffee.

1. Fare trade and ecologic

2. Ecologic

and

3. a coffee commonly produced with bad working conditions and salaries for the farm workers

So I have as customer here three choices:

1. I can buy a coffee traditional produced with use of insecticide and bad working conditions for the workers.

or

2. I can buy the same coffee and blend but ecological produced.

or

3. I can buy a coffee that is ecological produced coffee on farms offering good living conditions for the farm workers.

I’m only asking: should I as a customer have those choices?

It is really absurd.

Local farming as an alternative good for animals, people and environment is shown in the movie “The milk system” with the farmer couple Alexander and Sonja Agethle in South Tyrol. link: http://www.suedtirol.info/wasunsbewegt/kaeseaktie

You also find Alexander Agethle at YouTube. Talking in German though.