Movie Review: "The Milk System"
In his documentary The Milk System Andreas Pichler seeks to understand the effect the development of the milk production system has on animals, the environment, and our politics.
Milk, like no other food product, symbolizes the insanity of our «modern» methods of food production.
What was once a much-romanticised and mythically pure natural product has now mostly degenerated into an industry product brutally traded and sold worldwide.
- Andreas Pichler
Andreas Pichler takes on the dairy industry in clear, understandable story lines that go from European agriculture to dairies and the global market to the refugee crisis. The award-winning filmmaker travels from gigantic factories, to Chinese supermarkets, to idyllic family-run stables in the German mountains. And yet, the journey begins in his childhood.
Pichler used to tend cows in the mountains of his hometown of Bozen.
“As I tended cows with the farmers in the mountains as I child, I never asked myself why cows give milk. It was entirely natural like apples hanging from trees and water flowing in the mountain river”.
Today, the dairy industry is big business. 200 million tons are manufactured in Europe every year.
The Milk System looks at the global economic context in detail through many different characters, both the winners and the losers. Pichler visits family businesses that are having trouble because of price pressure from groups like "Friesland-Campina" and "Arla Foods" and joins an agricultural fair in "Cremona," the World Dairy Congress, and COPA-COGECA.
Unlike many other documentaries about animal welfare, then, The Milk System presents an array of facts and perspectives that allows viewers to draw their own conclusions.
Trailer ‘The Milk System ‘