Amy Taylor’s ‘MILKED’: An untold story that had to be told
MILKED presents the reality of an industry that has a huge marketing budget to present it’s side of the story, which it does relentlessly and without reflecting the truth.
SANDRA KYLE: The dairy exposé MILKED is reeling in the awards while the Dairy Industry remains silent… In this article End Animal Slaughter’s Sandra Kyle talks to its inspirational Director, Kiwi filmmaker Amy Taylor…
SK: Why did you make ‘MILKED’?
AT: The motivation for making this film came from a growing awareness I had about the dairy industry’s impacts on people, the environment, and on animals. I began looking into the dairy industry more and seeing the damage it does to the environment, as well as the water pollution, one of the most obvious being the huge amount of native forests and wetlands that have now been turned into a monoculture of grass and cows that covers a massive amount of the country. When I saw Chris Huriwai’s social media videos about the industry we began talking about the need to do a feature documentary about it, that was in 2018 and I began filming in 2019.
MILKED presents the reality of an industry that has a huge marketing budget to present it’s side of the story, which it does relentlessly and without reflecting the truth. I hope that people will watch the film before deciding for themselves which side of the story they believe. It’s an independent documentary and I spent nearly 3 years working on it because it’s an untold story that had to be told.
The dairy industry have been mostly very quiet about the film, they seem to be hoping that if they ignore it, it will go away. I’ve seen a lot of comments accusing the film of being fictional and propaganda etc but all of our sources are available on our website (milked.film/facts), and as yet no one has pointed out anything specific that is inaccurate. It’s easy to make general statements to try and damage the credibility of the film (one reviewer did this by calling it ‘deeply flawed’ in the headline, without any real basis for doing so), but it’s obviously not so easy for them to find any actual fault in the research and information we presented. We have had quite a few dairy farmers contact us saying that they’re aware that these issues are real and that we need to be urgently transitioning away from dairy, so it’s not everyone in the industry with their head in the sand.
There are some solutions featured in the film, but basically we want the industry to be honest, the government to help dairy farmers transition, and for consumers to know the truth about what they’re buying…
SK: What do you think the future holds for dairying in New Zealand, and worldwide?
AT: I really hope that governments around the world help farmers to transition out of dairy sooner than later. As well as the fact that it’s unhealthy for people, destructive to the environment, and cruel to animals, something that most people aren’t aware of is that real dairy products can now be made without cows, and huge money is going into scaling up this industry – Perfect Day Foods is one example of a company focusing on this. The dairy proteins casein and whey are being produced in fermentation tanks from microbes, instead of in the mammary glands of cows. This precision fermentation process is how the majority of rennet for the dairy industry is already being made, and it’s been predicted to wipe out the global dairy industry in the next 10-15 years. NZ’s milk powder exports will be one of the first to go. SOURCE…
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