Here is just a small list of things I think should be prohibitively expensive: imported flowers, leaf blowers, portable speakers, Frank Sinatra albums and bleach. Here is a list of things I think should be free: childcare, access to woodland, water in pubs, healthcare, ketchup at chip shops and lateral flow tests. And somewhere between the two sits milk.
Michael Oakes, chair of the national dairy board of the National Farmers’ Union, told the Today programme this week that rising costs in fuel, fertilisers and animal feed have made dairy farming unsustainable for many people in the UK. Farmers are leaving the sector, getting into terrible debt and worse. As a result of these rising costs, we are likely to see an increase in the price of milk, as well as butter, cheese, yoghurt and everything else that would make up about 85% of my four-year-old son’s diet if he had his way. While this is obviously going to be a huge issue for people on low incomes – especially parents and older people with mid-century appetites – it is also perhaps time. I don’t want to walk into a bear fight covered in honey here but, like many people, I believe that farmers should be paid fairly, supermarkets shouldn’t be able to squeeze every drop of profit out of food producers and more of us should start to see milk – all dairy – as a luxury.
I come from a pretty dairy-oriented family. I remember visiting cows with my vet grandad, pushing my entire arm up a cow’s clenching orifice to feel if it was pregnant, drinking a pint of silver top through a straw in front of Neighbours. I am now very lucky to be able to have my milk delivered, in glass bottles, alongside oat milk, orange juice and, if my partner logs in to the website, something called a “chocolate bomb”. I can, at the moment, afford it. That is a privilege that many people do not share. But it is also true that, ethically, environmentally and morally, I can only ignore the questionable effects of dairy farming on rivers, the earth and individual animals for so long.
I may, in my heart, remain a cream-faced fool, but I also know that, as a planet, we can no longer afford cheap milk.
Nell Frizzell is the author of The Panic Years, out now through Bantam Press. Arwa Mahdawi is away
