“How do we get back to that place where we’re not harming our animals and not harming our environment? You know, it sounds like utopia but I think we could do things a whole lot better than we are at the moment,” says vet Alison Dewes.

Milk and Money: The True Cost of Dairy in Aotearoa is a six-part series exploring the dairy industry’s impact on the community, economy and environment of Aotearoa, and considering what a sustainable future for the industry could look like.

In Episode 6: Milk, we look at the 6.5 million living animals at the heart of the dairy industry. It can be easy to forget that milk is produced for baby calves, and for cows to produce milk we need to impregnate them once a year. Half of calves in New Zealand are killed within days or weeks of being born. 

We explore the experience of the dairy cows, if there are more ethical ways we could be treating them, or if we need cows to produce milk at all.

Re: Journalist Baz Macdonald speaks to vet and agricultural consultant Alison Dewes, executive chairman of Southern Pastures Prem Maan, postdoctoral fellow Olivia Ogilvie, biotechnologist Dr Laura Domigan, and Maury Leyland and John Penno of Leaft Foods.

Watch the whole series here.

Made with the support of NZ on Air.