DROWNING IN MISERY: The dairy industry is blaming vegans for its decline
The market for plant-based alternatives is booming. One in three Brits now drinks plant-based milk, up from a quarter in 2020, a trend that the European Union has apparently attempted to disrupt
SOPHIE K ROSA: In April, Arla Foods, Britain’s largest dairy company, launched a campaign – backed by their own research – arguing that the rise of veganism among young people is responsible for the dairy industry’s increasing precarity. Titled “Don’t Cancel the Cow”, the campaign suggests that people’s choices not to consume dairy are ill-informed, and argues for “the need to balance the conversation when it comes to food and the health of our planet”.
Arla’s campaign is based on proprietary research that has found that 49% of the UK would change their diet based on what they read on social media. Gen Z is under particular pressure to go vegan, the Arla research found: although 70% would prefer to continue consuming dairy, half feel ashamed to order it in public in front of their peers, and an “alarming” 57% of Zoomers plan to give up dairy entirely…
The Arla campaign is only the most recent instance of this: since February 2018, the dairy industry has promoted “Februdairy” in response to the rise of Veganuary… According to Kai Heron, a political economy researcher with a special interest in dairy farming, Don’t Cancel The Cow is significant, reflecting the industry’s “desperation” in an increasingly inhospitable economic climate and general tendency to “play the victim”…
For over two decades, the economic climate has become increasingly harsh for dairy farmers. Prior to the 1993 Agricultural Act, farmers were guaranteed a minimum price for milk by the Milk Marketing Board. Doorstep delivery, which is more profitable than retail sales, made up almost half of the retail milk market in 1995; it now makes up just 3%. Since the dissolution of the Milk Marketing Board in 1994, UK dairy farmers have suffered record losses, with supermarkets pushing prices to all-time lows…
The UK government is now planning to remove subsidies altogether, on the grounds that they help small, less profitable farms stay afloat and are therefore uncompetitive. Where, for decades, previous governments have supported farmers to avoid land consolidation, in removing subsidies Heron believes the current government aims to consolidate agricultural land into the hands of fewer people in the hopes of making the industry more competitive…
Chas Newkey-Burden is a writer and animal liberationist. “For dairy bosses to say we shouldn’t ‘cancel the cow’ is gaslighting, pure and simple,” he argues, citing the “traumatic” process in industrialised dairy farming of separating cows from their calves within hours or days of birth – a process the general public is becoming increasingly aware of thanks to recent films such as Cow and Cowspiracy. Newkey-Burden believes that “dairy farmers are suddenly terrified because people are seeing what they do just as plant-based alternatives are growing in quality and popularity”.
Indeed, the market for plant-based alternatives is booming. One in three Brits now drinks plant-based milk, up from a quarter in 2020, a trend that the European Union has apparently attempted to disrupt. In 2017, the European Parliament banned the words “cheese” or “milk” for plant-based alternatives, while a recent (unsuccessful) amendment to existing regulations attempted to prohibit the “imitation or evocation” of dairy products – for example, vegan yoghurt being sold in yoghurt pots.
These attempts to make vegan alternatives “less appealing”, says Heron, extend to Big Dairy routinely funding research that finds vegan diets are harmful to humans… With only around 2-3% of the population cutting out dairy, vegans aren’t what’s hurting dairy profit margins; they’re just an easy target… Heron says that Arla’s Don’t Cancel The Cow campaign has little to do with veganism. Rather, with farmers struggling to turn a profit. SOURCE…
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