Raw milk

The more I go to big cinemas, the more I loathe them and the more I go to independent cinemas, the more I love them. Properly love them.

This evening, The Minx and I went to the Dukes theatre in Lancaster to see a screening of 'The Moo Man'. This, it has to be said, was very much a Minx thing although I was up for anything involving cinema (that wasn't a horror/suspense film).

In brief, the film was made using Kickstarter funding and follows the day to day existence of a dairy farmer. This is a chap who works ten times harder than I do to produce milk at a cost of 44p per litre, that is bought by the supermarkets for 37p per litre. Here is a man who works himself to death but relies on tax credits to get by because of the supermarkets' lack of decent values. We should all stop and think about that.

But, hard working and enterprising man that he is, he goes out and tries to sell his raw, unpasteurised milk direct to the public. By selling 10% of his product his way, he makes 40% of his income. And in the middle of all this, his favourite cow dies because of a Chinese lantern. It is an excellent and moving film.

The director was there at the screening to take questions afterwards, which was pretty entertaining as there was a number of dairy farmers in the audience. And while they all seemed to be lovely people, their anger and frustration wasn't far below the surface. But the good news was that the farmer in the film is now selling all his milk direct and making a profit.

I've known for a while - well, for a long time - that the supermarkets fleece our dairy farmers. (And, consequently, a family run farm closes every day in this country.) This film brought that home to me, though. I'd urge you to see the film if you can and also to find somewhere other than a supermarket to buy your milk.