Milky milky!

[Proud to be erratic]

No, @Inka, I freely admit I don't know all the inner details of so many of these things. Alas I suspect nor do most of us. I do know there is a huge amount of inaccurate or worst deliberately incorrect information designed to convince us that something is bigger, better or worse than is the actual case. Very, very, little is actually what manufacturers claim on their packaging or labelling and while age might bring cognitive decline and vulnerability, age also carries background knowledge and experience.

I do know that drilling for so called "spring" water is simply not an environmentally friendly thing to do. Note there is negligible "free" discharging water from springs in UK; there are a huge number of springs, which are essential and fundamental to keeping our fresh water streams, then rivers fresh! Despite constant pollution from any number of authorised or illegal sources. Springs as described on packaging invariably aren't springs, but water extracted from aquifers. (Not what it says on the packaging). It may be necessary to provide potable water today by drilling into aquifers, but that is not sustainable and reflects badly on our own first world country's failure over the last 50+ years to manage our resources well. This is not a poke at any one Government - rather a poke at our National unwillingness to face up to the cost of what needs doing, leading to political unacceptability throughout my lifetime.

I will in the next few days look more carefully at the link you've provided, although my instinct leaves me no more inclined to believe that source either, expecting it to be biased to support whatever bottom line or agenda is underpinning that.

I also know that our own National Dairy Industry is likely to be very economical with the truth about how a pint of milk arrives in our supermarkets. I don't expect that to be as natural, environmentally beneficial, or animal friendly as I'd like to believe. I grew up in the Staffordshire countryside, in a singleton house wholly enveloped by 4 small farms and had some amazing, idyllic childhood years watching small farms produce milk, pork and cereals, as well as sileage and rotting manure for winter feed and enrichening the fields. Our next door neighbour genuinely knew the names of each of his cows, but they were still a business for him. I was allowed to help in the milking parlour as a 9 year old, swept manure with a massive broom as part of keeping the farmyard and road clean, after the cows twice daily walked along them to get to their nearby fields. I have probably got a rose tinted perception of the dairy industry. At least it is regulated within the UK and across Europe, which is more than can be said for many third world suppliers of foods and other manufactured goods.

But I reiterate, I'm no expert on the impact of UK's dairy industry and your perception of the environmental impact or animal cruelty may be cleared than my perception of these things. But adding to all that by sustaining a demand for imported soy products or plant based milks that are not sustainable in terms of the use of potable water - is trying to mitigate an existing wrong BT adding further wrong.

I do not know what the solution is, nor how to implement better practices globally. But I can't help thinking we need to make best use of what we have locally and not expect the supermarkets to import these things which have hidden, but identifiable, environmental costs. I am convinced Global warming is real.

 

[Inka]

Yes Inka BUT where do almond trees grow? - I've never yet seen one growing in Europe and defo not in the UK - whereas we have several times seen walnut trees in France and even picked some there, then completely forgot about them where they were and having tried one initially and been disappointed didn't know what to do when we found em again. Tried them and they were utterly delicious that time so wished we'd picked more! Tree in a hedgerow near a campsite we happened to be staying on. Which campsite where, I now haven't the slightest idea!

Not sure @trophywench as I don’t regularly drink it. There are lots of things in supermarkets not from the U.K., eg green beans from Kenya, tea from India. The environmental impact of cows milk is still greater, which is the point I was responding to.

This article has a nice graph:

Plant based milks versus dairy milk | Ethical Consumer

More and more people in the UK are switching to plant-based milks as an alternative to dairy. How much better are they for the climate, what about nutrition, and which is the best plant milk for the environment?

www.ethicalconsumer.org

 

[Inka]

No, @Inka, I freely admit I don't know all the inner details of so many of these things. Alas I suspect nor do most of us. I do know there is a huge amount of inaccurate or worst deliberately incorrect information designed to convince us that something is bigger, better or worse than is the actual case. Very, very, little is actually what manufacturers claim on their packaging or labelling and while age might bring cognitive decline and vulnerability, age also carries background knowledge and experience.

I do know that drilling for so called "spring" water is simply not an environmentally friendly thing to do. Note there is negligible "free" discharging water from springs in UK; there are a huge number of springs, which are essential and fundamental to keeping our fresh water streams, then rivers fresh! Despite constant pollution from any number of authorised or illegal sources. Springs as described on packaging invariably aren't springs, but water extracted from aquifers. (Not what it says on the packaging). It may be necessary to provide potable water today by drilling into aquifers, but that is not sustainable and reflects badly on our own first world country's failure over the last 50+ years to manage our resources well. This is not a poke at any one Government - rather a poke at our National unwillingness to face up to the cost of what needs doing, leading to political unacceptability throughout my lifetime.

I will in the next few days look more carefully at the link you've provided, although my instinct leaves me no more inclined to believe that source either, expecting it to be biased to support whatever bottom line or agenda is underpinning that.

I also know that our own National Dairy Industry is likely to be very economical with the truth about how a pint of milk arrives in our supermarkets. I don't expect that to be as natural, environmentally beneficial, or animal friendly as I'd like to believe. I grew up in the Staffordshire countryside, in a singleton house wholly enveloped by 4 small farms and had some amazing, idyllic childhood years watching small farms produce milk, pork and cereals, as well as sileage and rotting manure for winter feed and enrichening the fields. Our next door neighbour genuinely knew the names of each of his cows, but they were still a business for him. I was allowed to help in the milking parlour as a 9 year old, swept manure with a massive broom as part of keeping the farmyard and road clean, after the cows twice daily walked along them to get to their nearby fields. I have probably got a rose tinted perception of the dairy industry. At least it is regulated within the UK and across Europe, which is more than can be said for many third world suppliers of foods and other manufactured goods.

But I reiterate, I'm no expert on the impact of UK's dairy industry and your perception of the environmental impact or animal cruelty may be cleared than my perception of these things. But adding to all that by sustaining a demand for imported soy products or plant based milks that are not sustainable in terms of the use of potable water - is trying to mitigate an existing wrong BT adding further wrong.

I do not know what the solution is, nor how to implement better practices globally. But I can't help thinking we need to make best use of what we have locally and not expect the supermarkets to import these things which have hidden, but identifiable, environmental costs. I am convinced Global warming is real.

I agree with using more local products but I think I read that the U.K. can no longer feed itself on U.K. only products and we’re a pretty highly populated country.

Most plant milks don’t have spring water. I listed that because that was in the particular brand of almond milk I last bought. If you look at the link in my reply to Jenny (above) there’s a graph showing how much water various plant milks use, alongside the biggest user of water by a long way - cows milk.

Ethical considerations are important to people too, whether they choose to drink cows milk or not. For example, here’s a recentish article re the immediate killing of male calves. Not that their life is exactly great even if that’s not done, but it’s an attempt to implement further welfare standards:

The end of dairy’s ‘dirty secret’? Farms have a year to stop killing male calves

Supermarket support and rising use of sexed semen expected to help UK farmers meet new welfare rules by the end of 2021

www.theguardian.com

With regard to soya milk, another often criticised product, people point to the large areas of deforestation caused by growing soya beans. True, but what they fail to add is that the majority of those soya beans are used for animal feed, so it’s not actually the soya milk causing the most destruction.

I’ve used the Ourworldindata website a number of times for different statistics and I have no reason to believe it’s biased. I believe the impact of the dairy industry far outweighs that of plant milks.

 

[rebrascora]

Yes Inka BUT where do almond trees grow? - I've never yet seen one growing in Europe and defo not in the UK

Almonds do grow in the UK but not commercially as the blossom is too vulnerable to frost. My partner's sister has one in their orchard and they do get some almonds from it. I have a walnut tree but still waiting for my first nut. It takes them 12-15 years to start fruiting.

The majority of almond production is in the USA and the crop does take a huge amount of water which they can ill afford, they are having to pump it out of underground aquifers to keep the trees alive and as climate change hits them it is becoming less and less sustainable. At least here in the UK we generally get plenty of water for cows to drink and the milk they produce isn't shipped half way around the world. There is also cruelty to lots of animals and birds and insects and rodents in clearing the land for this intensive almond growth and soya and coconut too for that matter. Life is cruel. Our impact on the planet injures and kills lots of other creatures whether we like it or not.

Like @Proud to be erratic, I too strongly suspect that there is manipulation of facts and figures, because logic tells me that all the intensive agriculture involved in production of almonds and then the factories making them into milk and then it being shipped half way across the world just doesn't add up to me, when we get more rainfall here in the UK than California, so why would we ship what is essentially water with a few ground almonds in it and perhaps other additives, all that way, when we have animals producing a similar more naturally occurring product here.

Maybe in another 10 years with global warming we will see the switch to growing almonds commercially here in the UK and I might have less qualms about it provided we still retain enough rainfall to sustain it, but my gut feeling is that we probably need to move away from industrialised farming and perhaps the industrialised food industry too.

 

[Inka]

I’d love to have nut trees- they sound lovely. We did have a massive harvest of hazelnuts once (and yes, you can get hazelnut milk).

The first site I linked to is a data site with all kinds of stats on it. There’s no evidence at all it’s biased in favour of plant milks.

If we’re talking about air miles, then the shops are full of non-U.K. products - spices, tea, coffee, sugar, tropical fruit, fruit from S Europe, beans from Africa, wines from Australia, and so on.

People have to make their own choices, weighing up the pros and cons for each product, and looking at their choices overall (ie the sum ‘badness’ of their choices). I’m very sure the coconuts for my coconut milk aren’t grown in the U.K. but I’m also sure that my consumption of it isn’t excessive and that my other choices make up for it to some (a large?) extent.

I totally agree the ideal would be to move away from industrialised farming and food production, but sadly I’m not sure that’s possible. Too many people, societal changes, etc etc.

An old but interesting book is Diet For A Small Planet. It argues that we could feed the world, but for the ineffectiveness of food production.

 

[CliffH]

Just thought ... must have been grown in Spain - shedloads of places had horchaterias, in the 1960s/70s. Oh blast - tigernuts!

From reading this thread, I think I'm saving myself a lot of angst and guilt by drinking my coffee black 😉

 

[Drummer]

Being from farming stock myself I do find it amusing to read that the water used in the dairy industry is a loss to the environment.
The cows do not retain what they drink - it comes out the other end and on many farms goes into the soil, irrigating the cow pasture or the strategically placed orchard, or rows of willow coppice to their benefit.
Most farmers do not want to pollute water courses with direct 'run off' - and they get fined for it too, but after percolating through the soil the resultant water entering a stream or river or the ground water can be put back into the potable water supply, and it is.
As the water from the mains is metered and paid for there are systems where the wash off from the milking shed ends up on gardens, in greenhouses or root fed hydroponics - but that doesn't seem to count.
You really need to consider what the counter is trying to prove when you see a chart where one particular element appears to be vastly larger or smaller than all the rest.

 

[Inka]

It’s a statistics website @Drummer I’ve used it a number of times, usually for personal interest, and usually for things like prevalences of illness, literacy levels, etc.The figures are just that - figures. Yes, the dairy one is biggest. Why? Occam’s Razor - or a secret global cabal of vegans?

Edited to add another link saying the same thing (there are loads out there):

https://www.sciencefocus.com/science/which-vegan-milk-is-best-for-the-environment

All of the non-dairy milks are much better for the environment than cow’s milk. They use less land, less water and generate lower amounts of greenhouse gases. The milk with the lowest greenhouse gas emissions is almond milk, because the trees lock up a lot of CO₂ as they grow. However, it does require the most water to produce of the vegan milks. Soy milk uses the least water with only slightly higher emissions.

 

[CliffH]

I’d love to have nut trees- they sound lovely. We did have a massive harvest of hazelnuts once (and yes, you can get hazelnut milk).

The first site I linked to is a data site with all kinds of stats on it. There’s no evidence at all it’s biased in favour of plant milks.

If we’re talking about air miles, then the shops are full of non-U.K. products - spices, tea, coffee, sugar, tropical fruit, fruit from S Europe, beans from Africa, wines from Australia, and so on.

People have to make their own choices, weighing up the pros and cons for each product, and looking at their choices overall (ie the sum ‘badness’ of their choices). I’m very sure the coconuts for my coconut milk aren’t grown in the U.K. but I’m also sure that my consumption of it isn’t excessive and that my other choices make up for it to some (a large?) extent.

I totally agree the ideal would be to move away from industrialised farming and food production, but sadly I’m not sure that’s possible. Too many people, societal changes, etc etc.

An old but interesting book is Diet For A Small Planet. It argues that we could feed the world, but for the ineffectiveness of food production.

Certainly no coconut palms in Scotland . My partner (who was born in Scotland) tells me that the climate's much warmer here than it used to be though.

 

[Drummer]

It’s a statistics website @Drummer I’ve used it a number of times, usually for personal interest, and usually for things like prevalences of illness, literacy levels, etc.The figures are just that - figures. Yes, the dairy one is biggest. Why? Occam’s Razor - or a secret global cabal of vegans?

Edited to add another link saying the same thing (there are loads out there):

https://www.sciencefocus.com/science/which-vegan-milk-is-best-for-the-environment

All of the non-dairy milks are much better for the environment than cow’s milk. They use less land, less water and generate lower amounts of greenhouse gases. The milk with the lowest greenhouse gas emissions is almond milk, because the trees lock up a lot of CO₂ as they grow. However, it does require the most water to produce of the vegan milks. Soy milk uses the least water with only slightly higher emissions.

Ah yes - statistics.
Who was it who first said, lies, damn lies and statistics?
I am just amused by the term 'used' for the water 'consumption' of the dairy industry - the water is merely passing through over or around the cows - otherwise they'd explode.

 

[CliffH]

Ah yes - statistics.
Who was it who first said, lies, damn lies and statistics?
I am just amused by the term 'used' for the water 'consumption' of the dairy industry - the water is merely passing through over or around the cows - otherwise they'd explode.

 

[trophywench]

Blimey @CliffH - a photo of the Dun Cow! (of course, she was as real as the bloke that killed her, one Guy of Warwick in whose memoriam Guy's Tower at Warwick Castle was famously built)

 

[Inka]

Ah yes - statistics.
Who was it who first said, lies, damn lies and statistics?
I am just amused by the term 'used' for the water 'consumption' of the dairy industry - the water is merely passing through over or around the cows - otherwise they'd explode.

But that’s what we mean when we say “used” in relation to water and it’s commonly understood that way. No-one brings up urination or the water cycle. Also, it’s not just about the water the cows drink.

If you think the figures given are wrong, prove it. Every site I’ve looked at has had similar figures. Strange how they’re all ‘lying’ about the same thing.

 

[nonethewiser]

With regard to soya milk, another often criticised product, people point to the large areas of deforestation caused by growing soya beans. True, but what they fail to add is that the majority of those soya beans are used for animal feed, so it’s not actually the soya milk causing the most destruction.

I’ve used the Ourworldindata website a number of times for different statistics and I have no reason to believe it’s biased. I believe the impact of the dairy industry far outweighs that of plant milks.

Sexed semen has been around for quite some time in agriculture, so why it's taken them this long to implement a ban on killing these poor creatures from birth is just maddening

 

[beating_my_betes]

And what about the impact of the dairy industry @Proud to be erratic ? Do you know the environmental impact of that, not to mention the cruelty aspect?

Dairy vs. plant-based milk: what are the environmental impacts?

A growing number of people are interested in switching to plant-based alternatives to dairy. But are they better for the environment, and which is best?

ourworldindata.org

Cow’s milk has significantly higher impacts than the plant-based alternatives across all metrics. It causes around three times as much greenhouse gas emissions; uses around ten times as much land; two to twenty times as much freshwater; and creates much higher levels of eutrophication.

Animal products are bad for the environment, and dairy is no exception. The level of brutality, across the board, is something that future generations will feel ashamed of.

 

[PaulG]

Slightly off topic:-

As time passes and the seasons revolve I watch the Grey Squirrels walk the electric wires to the pole on the edge
of my garden, crawl down the pole and explore my garden. Bulging cheeks give the game away as they sniff and
search the back lawn for suitable spots to bury their ill gotten gains.
Some I assume they remember come winter but others germinate and become young walnut trees.
I pull a dozen or more each year but the odd one escapes my notice and grows on till its roots defeat my arm
pulling power. The biggest at the moment is 4ft high with a trunk of an inch or more at the base.
.
Isn't nature wonderful ?
Paul G

 

[Docb]

Slightly off topic @PaulG but a useful reminder that all is not quite as bad as some would have you believe.

 

[Inka]

Things might be good for those squirrels, but since 1970, there’s been a big collapse in average wildlife population sizes:

WWF - Building a future in which humans live in harmony with nature.

For the last 50 years our mission has been to stop the degradation of the planet's natural environment and to build a future in which humans live in harmony with nature. Join us !

wwf.panda.org

And it’s not just far-flung places. Biodiversity in Europe is in crisis too. Nobody should be complacent.

 

[Drummer]

But that’s what we mean when we say “used” in relation to water and it’s commonly understood that way. No-one brings up urination or the water cycle. Also, it’s not just about the water the cows drink.

If you think the figures given are wrong, prove it. Every site I’ve looked at has had similar figures. Strange how they’re all ‘lying’ about the same thing.

I used to work at HMIT - the Tax office - I know about creative accounting.
Another thing the used water from dairy farms is used for is watering in the sewage cake - the stuff from the drains from our homes filtered out at water treatment plants. It washes it into the soil so that the run off is reduced when there is heavy rain.
Somehow that is not part of the equation, nor any of the other secondary uses of water from the dairy herd.

You do need to be 'old school' to understand these things though - like the hobby farmer who played merry hell with the neighbour for letting his pigs in to the orchard they'd taken over, then found that it was overrun with all sorts of rough scrub and there were very few apples on the trees. The pigs had been clearing the undergrowth and fertilising the soil for decades - ever since the apple trees were big enough to cope with the visits of the pigs.
There is the same lack of understanding with 'Conservationists' blaming the spread of deserts on the nomads they managed to get banned from marginal land, not understanding the the land is watered and enriched by the wandering herds the nomads have tended for thousands of years, but it is not something learned overnight.

 

[Inka]

I grew up next door to a farm, but you’re quite right I don’t have huge amounts of farming knowledge. Lucky then, that it wasn’t me who did the studies: it was scientists well-qualified to understand what they’re researching and measuring. TBC, that’s scientists not hobby scientists